


In the Dark

by Evilpixie



Series: DC Omegaverse [2]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, Superman - All Media Types
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Anal Sex, Childhood Trauma, Developing Relationship, Dominant Bottom, Dominant Omega, Drama, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, Falling In Love, Family Drama, Friends With Benefits, Knotting, Love Confessions, Love Triangles, M/M, Masturbation, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Omega Verse, Oral Sex, Pack Dynamics, Pack Family, Rimming, Sex Addiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-21
Updated: 2013-12-28
Packaged: 2018-01-02 05:41:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 19
Words: 48,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1053151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evilpixie/pseuds/Evilpixie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wherein Bruce is a dominant omega and Clark the alpha he uses for his heat. But Clark has a secret and can't bear to let go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [In The Dark-黑暗之中](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4896031) by [Forth_East](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Forth_East/pseuds/Forth_East)



> This story is set in the 'Omega Verse'. If you are unfamiliar with the concept please have a quick peek at [this](http://archiveofourown.org/works/403644/chapters/665489) prior to reading. It really set me straight in terms of this whole thing. Also note that I have taken a few minor liberties with the trope.
> 
> I should also warn you there are some darker elements mildly touched upon if not greatly explored here.
> 
> Otherwise, I hope you enjoy!

Clark opened the door and was instantly hit by the fatally beautiful allure that filled the bedroom. A deep dark intoxicating fragrance that was sweet with erotic promise and heavy with unfulfilled desire. It wafted off the other man’s skin with every minute motion, filled the air with a bewitching siren call, and drew him in. Captured him with the lazy ease of a spider plucking prey from its web.

 

Bruce slowly rolled over on the mattress, arched his spine as he propped himself up onto his elbows, and regarded him. His eyes were dilated into two cavernous black holes swirling with insatiable hunger; possessive, predatory, and filled with destructive promise. His body was bare, untouched by even a sheet, and moving with each measured breath the man took; slow, sure, and broken with only the slightest shiver on exhale. His thighs were slightly spread and shone wet in the light that spilled from the open door; sex smelling slick slowly sliding down pale skin.

 

Clark took a step forward. Bruce growled.

 

It was a primeval display of dominance. A dominance Bruce demanded despite his position and the power of the man that had walked in his door. A dominance Clark didn’t deny him, could never deny him. A dominance that belonged to Bruce as surely as he did.

 

A dominance that defined them both.

 

He shuffled back half a step and lifted his jaw slightly to expose his throat. When the other man didn’t seem satisfied he quickly dropped to his knees in the doorway. Bruce rumbled his appreciation and collapsed back onto the bed to rock his hips against the firm bedding below him. Muscle rolled, flexed, and trembled. Wanton, desperate, and the most hypnotic thing Clark had ever seen.

 

“Clothes,” Bruce hissed as his body shook through a wave of hormone induced need.

 

Clark fumbled with his tie in the blur of super speed; untangled the suffocating knot and dragged the strip of material from the stiff collar to toss it aside. Bruce watched him through half lidded eyes and sunk his teeth into the pillow with a savagery usually hidden in the mathematical Batman he knew from the Justice League meetings.

 

He tossed his glasses carelessly aside and pulled his shirt over his head rather than attempt to fumble through the buttons. Bruce groaned as the Superman logo was revealed and writhed against the mattress.

 

His cape was bundled around his midriff to create the slight podge that Clark Kent wore but Superman did not. He shrugged it free to fall behind him with a faint whisper as it brushed against the floor behind him. He shuddered as it trailed silken and soft against his folded calves.

 

“Now, Clark,” Bruce growled. Clark caught a peek at the hard shaft of his penis crushed against the bed, leaking pre-come, and arching up towards the taunt shape of his belly. “ _Now_.”

 

He kicked off his shoes, yanked his belt from his pants, and tore the constricting item of clothing off in a motion so fast it would be lost to Bruce’s eyes. The bright red boots followed and then the bottom half of his uniform. Despite his speed Bruce was groaning into the pillow and edging up onto his knees when he finally managed to command his trembling limbs to scramble out of Superman’s long sleeves.

 

Everything seemed strangely super real. The shadows darker, the highlights brighter, and the midtones graded to sharp and splendid detail. All of it enhanced by the intoxicating scent, the mind lulling allure, the rich ready musk of Bruce Wayne writhing on the bed before him. He was as stimulating as any substance and easily more addictive.

 

Clark blindly kicked the door closed behind him. Wood splintered in the frame.

 

Bruce jerked and shivered as the room was plunged into darkness. The yawning blackness in his eyes grew and his tongue danced between his lips with a nervous thirsty flutter.

 

Clark bolted onto the bed, seized the man’s hip, and slid his hand up damp skin of his inner thigh. Bruce trembled violently and groaned with naked need into the sweaty cover of the pillow. His skin was warm to the touch and this close the scent of his heat near overwhelming. Hot, heavy, and yet still as captivating and controlling as the man himself.

 

“God, you’re perfect…” Clark heard himself mutter.

 

Bruce arched against his hand and twisted his head to the side to blink blindly back at him. Despite the heat fogging his gaze there was a flash of his usual biting intelligence burning like a black flame inside him.

 

“Fuck,” he rasped. “Fuck me.”

 

Clark’s fingers faltered and slipped against the hot skin of his balls hanging low and heavy between his legs. Bruce hissed, arched his back, and spread his legs, coming the closest Clark had ever seen him to presenting. He couldn't touch him enough. Couldn’t slide his hands along the well muscled thighs, cup his balls, or stroke the length of his penis enough to ever satisfy his physical addiction to him. Bruce Wayne. Batman.

 

“Fuck me!”

 

He ran his fingers in a reassuring loop around Bruce’s hipbone and leant forward to press his lips against the hot dripping hole buried in the fold of his arse. Bruce shivered and snarled but didn’t pull away as Clark gulped and swallowed the sweet wetness seeping from his open body.

 

The rich raw beauty of the taste consumed him.

 

Filled with all the pheromones that flooded the air, spiced with the sharp sweet of sex, and hot enough to burn like bourbon as it splashed against the back of his throat.

 

Clark scraped his tongue once across the wet rim of his entrance before penetrating the pucker of muscle. Bruce lurched back into him and groaned low and loud as Clark began to press the point of his tongue into the bundle of nerves located just inside him; the secret sweet spot every omega possessed that would clamp tight around an alpha’s knot.

 

Soon Bruce was gasping through a frayed and frantic orgasm and thrusting back against Clark’s mouth. A quick inspection revealed Bruce’s erection still hard and ready between his legs. Semen unspilt.

 

Bruce was an omega possessed with enough potency of pheromones and enough willpower to commandeer and command any alpha he chose. Omegas were both the most discriminated against and covertly valued sexual caste – or gender if you subscribed to that political view – in a trio of possible outcomes. Alpha, beta, and omega.

 

While each type possessed a unique string of aptitudes and physical difference, omega males were easily most famous for the pornographic ability to orgasm both in the traditional male sense involving ejaculation and annually via the clusters of nerves there that flared to life when aroused.

 

A good alpha could make an omega come both ways at once.

 

Clark plunged his tongue deeper into the other man and hungrily mouthed his entrance; a newfound purpose pushing him to dive deeper into the destructively addictive flavour and fuck him with every thrust and flick of his tongue. As he did so he reached around and attached a vibrating fist onto the man’s swollen arousal. Bruce’s hand balled into a fist and his whole body shook with unguarded need.

 

“Fuck…” Not a command this time but a breathless curse.

 

His hips began to buck and twist against Clark’s face as if unsure if he should be thrusting forwards or back. Clark felt a trickle of warmth down his chin as a fresh wave of hot fluid assaulted him. Sweet. So sweet it almost stung. Sweet with the promise of sex without the need of seduction. Raw and animalistic. Messy and muddied. Ugly and urgent. Basic and beautiful. Alpha and omega.

 

Made more intense by the man panting into the mattress before him.

 

Bruce Wayne.

 

He was a black hole Clark was slowly being sucked towards. A powerful, beautiful, unexplainable, thing that would devour and destroy him with an unstable hunger. Dangerous, dark, demanding. And yet somehow also the most beautiful and the most disgustingly erotic thing in the whole world.

 

Bruce.

 

He came. Groan smudged into broken gasp as one orgasm brutally overlapped the other. Heat flushed wet and warm around Clark’s lips and ejaculate sprayed between his fingers to paint the man’s belly. Bruce twisted under the brutal treatment of his interlocking pleasure and slumped used and abused onto the mattress with a shaking moan.

 

Normally a man’s body would surrender to exhaustion after coming. In heat an omega wouldn’t. Couldn’t. There was only one thing that could quell the mounting need of the man below him. An alpha knot.

 

Bruce writhed and rolled over onto his back. Groped blindly until Clark slid his tongue greedily through the come splashed across his torso. The taste of his sweat, skin, and semen crashed into him; flooding his senses in dizzying desire and alighting every nerve on his body with desperate need.

 

Bruce’s fist found and tangled in his hair. Clark whined as he was pulled forward and face dragged down to crush his lips against Bruce’s. It wasn’t a kiss the kind lovers shared. It was a kiss triggered by the omega need to consume the distinctive alpha hormone. The alpha hormone he was now producing in his saliva.

 

Bruce plundered his mouth with a brutally penetrative push of tongue, scraped by his teeth, and swept his own tongue up in a rough dance. Somewhere at the back of his mind Clark was aware of the sounds that were spilling unhindered from his throat; somewhere he was aware of how aroused he sounded; how desperate. But then Bruce kicked his legs free, hitched them high over his hips, and all awareness disintegrated into a swirl of sex and suffocating kisses.

 

Clark entered him in a single, easy, thrust. He slammed his hands down either side of Bruce’s head and began to pound into him with an urgency fuelled by the thick scent of the other man’s heat and his own suppressed need. Their bodies met with a wet smack, they grunted into each others mouths, and Bruce grabbed his hip to guide him in at a better more brutal angle.

 

He loved him.

 

Clark stared down at the man below him, snarling through a fresh flush of pleasure, and felt his own body shudder with the realisation. He loved Bruce Wayne. Loved him with a depth that had little to do with his heats or the sex they shared outside them. Loved him with a fiery intensity that knotted in his gut and caused his fingers to tremble. That had him muttering broken marriage proposals in kryptonian as he rolled into the tight wet clench of his body.

 

He loved him.

 

He’d loved him for a long time now.

 

The first fragile stem of love had sprouted years back, before he even knew Bruce was an omega. Back when the blue eyed Batman had trusted him enough to reveal his identity, had commanded the Justice League without question despite his lack of powers, and graced him with the small curve of lip which in Bruce’s books was the same as a broad glowing grin; only more private, more personal.

 

Clark buckled forward and moaned through the first throes of his orgasm. Bruce hissed through his teeth and rolled his hips up against Clark. His eyes were foggy from pleasure, cheeks touched with two highpoints of colour, and skin damp with erotic smelling sweat. Under the stubbly line of his jaw his omega gland was a swollen red stain on his skin. Unmarked.

 

A flush of alpha tasting salvia filled his mouth. He clamped his teeth closed. He’d only bitten Bruce once and that had been a unique circumstance. Biting was the first stage to full blown bonding. He wouldn’t betray his friend’s trust by marking him in that way. Wouldn’t betray the man he loved. If he was going to bite Bruce the man would have to agree to it in a clear state of mind while not inebriated by his own hormones.

 

He doubted Bruce would.

 

He loved Bruce. The realisation was quickly becoming an easy acceptance. A fact made irrefutable but the amount of evidence in support of it. But Bruce’s emotions were darker, deeper, and pinned on the injustices of his past. He belonged to his mission, to the traitorous city below the high rise, the cape and cowl in the cave beyond. Clark’s love was a tree; tall, powerful, and strong. Bruce’s a flower; vibrant, beautiful, but doomed to die. All his strength, forests of devotion, sold to his city.

 

He loved Bruce but it was a love unrequited.

 

“Knot,” Bruce grunted. “Knot me.”

 

Clark doubted he could have withheld his knot even if he tried.

 

As his pleasure peaked he thrust frantically a few more times before pushing the swelling base of his shaft through the pucker of muscle into Bruce. The man flinched but rocked forward to take him even as Clark came. His vision blurred with a blitz of pleasure as he emptied himself into him. His knot swelled further, trapping him within the other man, and issuing a long low groan from Bruce.

 

Most omegas would be mewling messes by this point. Bruce once again defied all convention and expectation.

 

He leant forward and slid his tongue up Clark’s cheek. The action washed away any hint of wariness Clark had been feeling and brought a fresh shudder of arousal coursing through his body. He began grinding against Bruce, crushing his knot against the nerves inside him, and reached down to stroke his half hard member into full erection.

 

The knot and the hormone filled semen Clark had sprayed into him had temporarily brought down the all consuming intensity of Bruce’s heat and his eyes sharpened with a touch of his usual intelligence to focus eerily onto him despite the near absolute darkness.

 

“Fuck I love your knot.”

 

Coherent but still high on heat.

 

Clark ground into him harder, roughly thumbed the head to his cock, and showered kisses onto his face. Sucked his bottom lip between his teeth and nipped it hard enough to draw a hint of blood. Bruce jerked back in surprise, tongued his lip, and growled. The growl melted into a groan of pleasure as the attention his body received came to a crest.

 

He watched in fascination as Bruce’s brow crumbled and his body shook through another twin orgasm.

 

“F-fuck!”

 

“Shh…”

 

Bruce bared his teeth and arched forward to snap hungrily at his mouth. “Kiss,” he hissed. “I want to kiss.”

 

Clark complied.

 

Bruce bit, tore, and tongued his mouth with a brutality that would have wounded a normal human. Clark loved it. Loved knowing Bruce could lose control with him, loved knowing he could let himself go, and loved being privy to Bruce when he did. He wrapped his arms around him and pressed his still hard length deeper into him as Bruce abused and used his lips.

 

A little less than half an hour later Clark’s knot began to subside. Bruce frowned at the lack it left and rolled them both over to slump almost possessively down on top of him. Another ten minutes and he was humping Clark’s hip as his heat began to spike again. He took his knot nine more times in roughly half hour bouts before finally collapsing boneless with exhaustion into the deep recovery sleep of an omega in heat.

 

Clark spooned in behind him and surrendered to his own fatigue for a time. When his internal clock told him the sun was rising beyond the windowless room he slipped out to soak up some energy before finally returning and cleaning the drying slick and come off the other man with a damp towel. Bruce didn’t stir. He would be asleep for hours yet and when he woke would only have a brief break in his heat, just enough to eat, drink, and use the toilet, before lapsing back into high heat.

 

Clark leant forward and kissed him.

 

It was a kiss void of the heat driven hunger that polluted the last few they shared. A kiss like the ones he wished he could give Bruce when he was awake. Slow and tender.

 

“I love you,” he whispered.

 

The words felt taboo and sent a tingle of forbidden thrill through him.

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

He dressed in his Superman uniform, abandoned his work suit rumbled on the floor, and floated out of the room, through the cave, and into the world beyond. Gotham woke around him, thousands of media outlets screaming mixed messages diluted with product placement, stereotype, and small scraps of truth spilling through select news programs. He could hear hundreds of other omegas heaving through heats just like Bruce, hundreds of alphas tending them, and thousands of others sharing lives.

 

Despite everything that had happened recently, despite the violent outcomes of the omega rights movement, despite the brutal condemnation of the gossip press, despite the international and interplanetary human trafficking, the shifting celebrity views, the population imbalance, and sexual caste related terrorist attacks; despite it all… people still loved each other. Loved each other not because of their sex, gender, or caste, but in spite of it.

 

Two alphas wrestled for top in a messy kiss, a beta playfully nipped an omega’s neck, and a pair of children boldly declared their intention of marriage upon adulthood, young enough to be ignorant if they were alpha, beta, or omega. He smiled and silently wished them luck in the endeavour.

 

The motion slid his lips against his teeth and he caught a lingering echo of the rich intoxicating flavour that was Bruce.

 

The man he loved.

 

The man he would return to.

 

The man that had, for a long time now, been important enough to drown out the entire world.

 

Bruce was just using him for his heat. Just using him. He couldn't... couldn't make something of this that wasn't there. It wouldn't be fair on Bruce to ask for more. He couldn't...

 

Clark swore raked his hand through his hair as he flew.

 

He was in trouble.


	2. Chapter 2

Bruce woke slowly.

 

Through a groggy haze he gradually became aware of the room around him. The air was thick with an intoxicating pheromone cocktail – a deliciously messy blend of alpha and omega –  that was spiced by the sharp sweet smell of sweat, sex, and semen. God, it was good. All he wanted to do was lie there, drifting between sleep and awake, and drink in the warm musky aroma. Let the seductive smell smother his senses as the swirling recolections of the last few days slowly assembled. He would have too if the sheet wasn’t heaped hot and sticky against him; an uncomfortable, unmovable, annoyance that nudged him irritably towards wakefulness.

 

Bruce opened his eyes and blinked into the all consuming darkness beyond. He tried to roll away from the hot bundle of bedding but found himself trapped in warm bands of flesh. Something hairy brushed against his face. He frowned and little by little his awareness caught up with him.

 

He was lying against something warm and firm, but yielding. A body, he realised, not sheets. A body pressed almost possessively against his in a tangle of limbs too hot to be human. A body softly seeping the hot heavy scent of a deeply satisfied alpha.

 

“Clark?”

 

His cheek was against Clark’s hair, the man’s face against his throat, and their arms wrapped messily around each other. Indestructible skin rose and fell with each slow breath. He did not stir.

 

Bruce’s mind danced devishly through the haze of memories from the last few days; harried orgasms, hormone filled kisses, and the relief of Clark’s knot filling the hollow helplessness of his heat. Clark who’s scent now mingled with his into the rich mating musk that flooded the small room. Clark who now lay against him headless of the dried sex fluids splashed across his skin.

 

Bruce carefully untangled himself from the other man and levied himself upright. He flinched as the motion awoke a pained protest from his abused body. Worked and worn beyond even its usual capacity.

 

His limbs were shaking and sore as he swung his legs blindly over the edge of the bed and hauled himself gracelessly onto his feet before stiffly shuffling by memory into the adjacent bathroom. He closed the door behind him and groped for the light switch. When he found it he was greeted by his own ragged reflection peering out of the mirror. His cheeks had hollowed slightly, chin developed a fresh prickle of growth, and eyes newly shadowed in recompense for his recently erratic sleeping patterns. There was a cut on his bottom lip he dimly remembered being bitten into place and a trail of bruises in the shape of fingerpritns around his hip. But despite his battered appearance and throbbing muscles he couldn’t ignore the deeply satisfied glow that radiated from him, nor the pleasant ache that only came from the most satisfying of sexual encounters.

 

He took a moment to indulge in the feeling and suck in the delicious mix of scent soaked into his pores before stepping with a touch of reluctance into the shower. It was automiatic and the nozzle dutifully poured a healthy dose of scolding hot water onto him with stinging pressure. He groaned in relief and slowly began to work through the twinges and kinks in his worn muscle. After a while his body began to loosen up under the torrent of water and the stale smell of his heat washed down the drain. It would be a while before he stopped smelling of Clark but that couldn’t be helped. Alpha hormones were designed to _mark_ and Clark had been heaping a fair share into and onto him over the last few days.

 

When he finished he bundled one of the few remaining clean towels around his shoulders, brushed his teeth with a disproportionate amount of toothpaste, and slipped back out into the dark of the bedroom. The erotic scent of their shared mating romanced him into silence for a moment before he furiously swallowed it down.

 

“Clark?”

 

The mattress shifted. Through the thin trickle of light seeping from the bathroom door he saw a hand skim across the empty space he’d left on the bed.

 

“Bruce? Where…?” A dark shadow propped itself up on its elbows. “Oh,” Clark muttered as he saw him standing, towel draped over his shoulders, and decidedly not in heat. “I guess you want me to go now.”

 

Bruce wished he could penetrate the darkness and see the look on the other man’s face. See what that strange note smudging his usual drawling tenor meant. But, unlike Clark, he didn’t have any powers; he couldn’t see in the dark.

 

“Are you alright?” He asked.

 

“Sure,” Clark said, shifting unseen in the bed. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

 

That note again. Small, stained, and like so many things about him unexplained.

 

Clark, Bruce was just discovering, was a riddle he was yet to answer. A complex code that hid behind a mask of dutiful docile devotion and a surprising submissive streak at odds with his stanch sure scent. A scent that was wholesome and strong, painted in bold brush strokes, but undercut by an unreadable dash of alienness. A mysterious pocket of hormones and pheromones his human body couldn’t interpret. Couldn’t understand. But could appreciate. A smell as inexplicable as the man himself.

 

Because there was no explanation for Clark.

 

There was nothing that could make clear why he was who he was. Or why that question intrigued Bruce in a way he never had before during their previous years of friendship.

 

Every time he thought he had reached a milestone, a defining understanding, Clark would surprise him yet again. Every time he thought he had Clark figured out he would uncover a new depth that would once again reshape their turbulent relationship. A new gesture, a new hobby, a new opinion; a new part of him he hadn’t known before.

 

Because Clark fascin… _Jesus_.

 

Bruce hugged the towel around himself as he shivered through a messy bout of need. It was the blasted smell of the room around him. The thick, intoxicating, allure that made him weak at the knees and hot around the neck at the thought of the nearest alpha.

 

Damn it if it wasn’t also Clark. Brazenly beautiful, passively powerful, and soundly safe. The only alpha he’d ever, truly, trusted.

 

“Are you…?”

 

“What time is it?” He husked.

 

“Nine twenty,” Clark answered.

 

“AM?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Good.” He knelt on the floor and started fumbling through pieces of discarded clothing.

 

“I…” Clark hesitated. “Are you sure your heat’s over? You just…”

 

“I’m fine.”

 

“I know but…”

 

“Don’t you think I know when my heat’s over?” He snapped. Found his jeans and stood to pull them on. They clung and scraped against his damp skin.

 

“I suppose,” Clark muttered miserably.

 

Bruce swore softly and rubbed his face in his hands. He didn’t mean to be so sharp. The clammy air, his aching body, and disjoined thoughts were chipping furiously at his control. All he wanted to do was kick off the chaffing clothes, collapse back onto the bed with Clark, and inhale their mixed musk. He gritted his teeth and started sucking in shallow breaths. He’d already lost too much time in heat. He couldn’t afford to waste anymore basking in the afterglow.

 

“I’m fine,” he said again. “Trust me.” His fingers found a rumbled shirt and he dragged it towards him and pulled it down over his head.

 

“Okay, but that’s mine.”

 

“What?”

 

“That.”

 

He froze as he caught sight of the sleeve in the beam of light pouring from the bathroom. The fabric was thin, sturdy, and tapered off at the wrist to point at his middle finger in a distantly alien design. The hem was a primary red and the body a royal blue. Turning into the light he caught sight of Superman’s crest emblazed across his chest.

 

He scowled. “I suppose you think this is funny.”

 

“No.” Clark materialised in front of him. The light trickling from the bathroom door caught his side, highlighting half of his chiselled features, and illuminating one unearthly blue eye. “We’re the same size,” he muttered and fingered the slightly loose fabric. “That should fit you better.”

 

“I always lose weight in heat,” Bruce dismissed him and began to wrestle the clinging costume off his shoulders.

 

“I know,” Clark said. “I hate it.”

 

He reached forward to help him and Bruce shivered through a sting of wanton weakness as Clark’s fingers brushed fleetingly up his side. The alien fabric tented over his head, submerging him for a moment in the other man's emboldening scent, and then was pulled off. He swayed on his feet, blinking stupidly into the dim light, as the naked alpha scooped his shirt off the floor and pushed it into his hands.

 

“God,” he rasped. He was becoming far too tethered to Clark. His body slowly but surely tailoring itself to respond to him; his taste, his touch, and his distinctly alpha smell. It was the first fragile footholds of a bond and had to be stamped out before it was allowed to grow. He couldn’t belong to Clark in that way. He couldn’t belong to anyone in that way. Batman couldn’t belong to anyone.

 

He’d have to take a break from Clark. He’d have to weather a few heats alone and find some mixed alpha hormone shots instead.He'd have to.. but he wouldn't. Even as he thought about it he knew his resolve wouldn’t hold. Clark was an addiction, a sinful seductive song he couldn’t quite escape, that he didn’t want to escape, so he kept hitting repeat. Over and over again. Every heat and more in between. Everytime he would lose himself in the majestic beauty of the man, in the gentle yet detailed treatment that would melt into a desperate dangerous dance, and in the raw sexual jolt Clark would give him when he - the most powerful being on the planet - sunk down on his knees in submision.

 

As long as Clark didn’t bite him they would starve off a proper bond, he justified. And because Clark didn’t bite him what they did have was one sided. It had to be.

 

Clark dressed with motion blurred movements; cloaking the sculpted shape of his body firstly in the second skin Superman uniform and then the bulky brown suit matched with a poorly knotted tie. He raked his hair over his brow and slid his glasses on, slightly tinted to dilute the startling alien blue of his eyes to a passive pastel.

 

“I’ll see you later,” he said, not quite looking at Bruce.

 

“Fine.”

 

He left, a tidal wave of displaced air to encore his abrupt departure.

 

The room felt hollow with him gone.

 

Bruce swore and pulled his shirt stiffly over his head before determinedly marching out into the batcave and padding slowly, painfully, up the steps into the manor. As he moved his muscles worked out the worst of their tension. Even so he was still shaking slightly when he shuffled into the kitchen, blinking through the offesnively bright spill of sunlight through the open blinds.

 

“He rises!” Dick called hefting a mug of coffee high in salute. He lounged behind the kitchen table, chair balanced procariously on its two back legs, and a cocky grin stretched across his lips.

 

Alfred looked up from the stove where he was frying eggs and pursed his lips as he took stock of him. Wordlessly added an extra three eggs and a couple of sausages to the frying pan.

 

Jason sat opposite Dick, hunched over his own cup, and glaring angrily into the steaming liquid inside.

 

“Report,” Bruce grunted and slumped down onto a chair between them. Flinched as he landed on the solid wood.

 

“Nothing much. We closed the missing teenagers’ case,” Dick said. “Got them safely back to their families to boot.”

 

“Who?”

 

“A branch of the Yakuza trying to move in on Penguin’s territory, would you believe it. The old bird swept them up pretty fast.”

 

“Where?”

 

Dick frowned. “The territory?" He asked.

 

"The teenagers," Bruce clarified.

 

"Oh. They were locked up in a rusty old boat in the harbour all ready to be shipped off to God knows where. You were right; they were all omegas. None of them had been touched though. I suppose we’re lucky those distant rich businessmen don’t like damaged goods.” He frowned down at his drink in disgust. “I put the report on the database.”

 

Alfred landed a steaming cup of black coffee in front of him. Bruce gratefully wrapped his hands around the heated mug and tipped a large portion down his throat. The burning bitter taste flooded his mouth and washed away the last lingering stale taste of his heat. He grimly guessed at how much more coffee he would have to consume to kick start his system into feeling normal again.

 

“Beyond that,” Dick continued after a brief pause, “there was a hit and run in downtown on Thursday, a few small time robberies, and we escorted Croc back to Arkham. But otherwise things have been pretty quiet.”

 

“Good.”

 

“You knew that,” Jason accused, still staring at his untouched coffee. “Your alien wouldn't have stuck around if something big was happening to your precious city.”

 

Bruce eyed him over the rim of his mug as he took a second mouthful. Jason kept his gaze resolutely down, body arranged in a simple submissive position despite the angry frown folding his forehead and the bitter words still hanging in the air. Jason had only recently slunk back under his roof to rejoin with the family and retake his old position within the pack. He was the only alpha in the household and it obviously grated on him to show deference to an omega pack leader. It had been the same story since the boy first hit puberty.

 

But, unlike Bruce, this was Jason’s only pack and the scattered pieces of his life he'd journeyed as a lone wolf had already left their mark. People needed packs, be they work packs, family packs, or something in between like the kind they shared, even if only occasionally.

 

“There you are, sirs,” Alfred declared and planted a full plate before each of them, dutifully blind in only the way a butler could be to the niggling tension in the room. "I hope everything is to your satisfaction."

 

Dick’s chair crashed back on all fours as he thanked Alfred and promptly attacked the meal with relish. The boy was a beta and thus spared the punishing cycle and brutal biology of the other sexual castes. Due to his low level - beta hormone levels were measured in the alpha hormone - he carried an almost flirtatious scent similar to a low level omega. Alfred on the other hand was a truely mid level beta; safe and sure.

 

Bruce eyed the food with frank distaste, his appetite still on hiatus as his body dipped back towards normal levels.

 

“You’re not going on patrol tonight without at least three consecutive meals before hand,” Alfred informed him curtly.

 

He grunted and forced his fingers to pick up the knife and fork.

 

Jason prodded a sausage a full circuit around his plate before gathering up his meal with an angry growl and marching out of the room.

 

“You stink like alien,” he snarled as he charged passed.

 

Bruce didn't have the energy to rise to the challenge. He would most likely pay for it later. Jason was a high level alpha and extremely sensitive to pack dynamics. If he was given a quarter he would take a half.

 

Dick frowned at him but didn't say anything. Alfred made a show of wiping down the counters.

 

The rest of the day was a swirl of slow recovery and preparation for patrol. He read Dick’s reports and refined and updated a few criminal profiles that applied, worked out the last of stiffness in his joints, and choked down two more meals. Just before midnight he soaked himself in a scent sterilizing bath, dressed in his armour, and finally disappeared into the dark embrace of Gotham at night.

 

By three in the morning he was finally feeling more himself.

 

The air was cold, crisp, and curled around the mingled scent of people, petrol, and piss. From where he was perched on the edge of Old Wayne tower he could hear a couple arguing, the distant wail of sirens as the police raced to catch up with his earlier work, and steady drip of water leaking through a broken drain. All of it was cold, cruel, and angry. All of it bleak and brutal evidence of the rot that ate at his city. Of the plague he fought.

 

Every part of it his purpose.

 

It was so different from the last few days.

 

Days of desperate dominance, carnivourous kisses, and brilliant blue eyes blinking down at him. Days swimming through a sea of phermones, inhaling the heart starting smell of the other man, and then drowning in the mix of it all. Days of the delicious deep _ache_ of being fucked down into the mattress by Clark. Clark who could rip apart worlds but still whined when he tangled his fist in his hair and fell to his knees with his throat bared when he growled at him. Clark who was innocently unaware of his unearthly beauty, who was a riveting mystery of emotions, and who would cringe and swallow as Bruce tossed his head back and bared his unbitable omega gland. Good to him... always so good to him... 

 

Bruce was yanked away from his thoughts as the receiver in his ear crackled sharply with a new violent crime report. There were two police men trapped behind their car under open fire. One screamed desperately for backup in his radio through a haze of distorted sound. It didn't matter. He didn't need the radio to hear it. The distinctive rattle of automatic guns echoed from the open mouth of a empty lot nearby. He leapt off the building, swung from his grapple, and glided across the rooftops towards the disturbance, his mind still niggling with wanton desire.

 

He cursed as he dove towards the thugs. Cursed his caste, cursed the complex mess of mating, and the mixed results it produced. But most of all he cursed Clark. Cursed him because, despite himself, he knew he would be craving him before the month's end.

 

He was in trouble.


	3. Chapter 3

“ _This_ is the problem with alphas as employees,” Perry White declared angrily and thumped his hand hard down on the wood of Clark Kent’s unmanned desk. An action figure acting paperweight wobbled alarmingly in the aftershock. Her fingers didn’t falter in their clattering dance across her keyboard. “Bloody useless,” Perry continued. “The only thing they can be relied on to do is drop everything at the barest whiff of a scenting bitch on the wind.”

 

Lois cocked an inquisitive eyebrow towards her scowling boss. “Not politically correct to call omegas bitches anymore, Perry.” Another sentence raced across her computer screen.

 

“Not politically correct not to show up to work for four days either,” the man replied with a snarl. “If that boy didn’t write like a God damned angel I swear he would be out on his rear faster than Superman can fart.” He checked his watch. “At this rate he still might be. He better have that blasted report on Mirror Master done when I see him next. You tell him that, Lane.”

 

“I’ll tell him,” she promised and with a neat flourish finished her report. “Hah! Start the presses; I’ve just got your page two.”

 

Perry waved his hand distractedly behind him as he strode back towards his office. “Spell check, Lane.”

 

She complied and flinched as her work was swallowed in a parade of jagged red lines. “The next politician that says they’re going to rationalize the English language has my vote,” she muttered and began to pick through the multitude of errors marring her work.

 

When Perry was at a safe distance Cat skipped over and landed in Clark’s vacant chair with a giggle. Her blonde hair was bundled high, held in place with a complex criss-cross of bobby pins. Her face smug behind a thick layer of skilfully applied makeup.

 

“Looks like Clark’s in trouble,” she said with a cheeky grin.

 

“I just hope whoever she is she’s worth it,” Lois muttered as she toyed uncertainly with a mangled string of letters and tried to remember the word it was originally intended to be. Inspiration didn’t leave room for consecutive spelling, it would seem.

 

“Who do you think it is?”

 

Lois shrugged. “There are a lot of omegas in the world.”

 

“Actually,” Ron interjected as he walked by, nursing a cup of pale coffee in long dark fingers, “as of two and a half weeks ago the omega percent of the population is officially under eight hundred million worldwide.”

 

“Like I said,” Lois muttered as she changed another word. “Lots of omegas.”

 

He frowned. Ron Troupe was the Daily Planet’s political reporter, easily the most qualified among staff, and had a real head for numbers as did most truly mid level betas. His writing was informative if not riveting.

 

“That’s against just over two and a half billion alphas,” he muttered.

 

She rolled her eyes. “Yes, we know, it’s a big concern that two out of every three alphas,” she threw her first two fingers of each hand up to mime a quotation mark, “miss out.”

 

Cat blinked. “Isn’t it?”

 

“Oh sure, if you discount however many betas…”

 

“Over three and a half,” Ron supplied.

 

“… who are just as willing and devoted partn…” she paused. “How do you spell ‘malnutrition’?”

 

“M-a-l…”

 

“Oh come on,” Cat pressed, waving away Ron’s help. “Clark hardly goes out anywhere. It’s _got_ to be someone we know. Aren’t you even a little bit curious?”

 

“Should we be gossiping about him?” Ron asked nervously.

 

“Why not? He’s not here and I _am_ the gossip columnist,” Cat said planting a proud hand over her chest.

 

“I hardly think it is news who Clark Kent is sleeping with.”

 

“No, but the Mayor’s wife had been far too faithful recently and I’m bored.”

 

Lois drifted out of the conversation, absently chewing her thumb nail over the mess of letters she’d left in her wake. After a while the mismatched pair wandered off caught in a deep discussion Ron believed was about sociological effects of sexual pack dynamics and Cat thought was celebrity gossip. Lois was halfway through correcting her article, and the long hand was an extra halfway around the polished round face of the clock, when Clark finally pushed through the door.

 

His scent hit her immediately.

 

Oh yeah. He’d been with an omega in heat. A high level too. It was blatantly obvious despite the scent dampening products practically dripping off his skin. Perry wasn’t going to like that.

 

She eyed him as he slumped down opposite her and blinked in exhaustion at the abandoned papers scattered across his desk. His hair was tousled despite obviously having had a comb yanked violently through it, his skin strangely pale, and cheeks freshly, if not well, shaven. Talk about being caught at a crime scene holding a gun. The only thing missing was a lipstick stain on his cheek.

 

“You’re fired,” Lois told him.

 

He jerked back as if he’d been stung. “What?”

 

“Unless you have the Mirror Master Article finished. Perry’s orders.”

 

“I…”

 

“You’re in trouble?”

 

A pitiable look. “Yeah.”

 

She sighed and shook her head. “Get a doctor’s certificate for this omega of yours, Smallville. You can’t keep disappearing like this without any official explanation. God knows you’re in and out of here enough as it is.” She eyed him critically. “Sleeve.”

 

Clark blinked and looked down. Blushed and quickly tucked the revealing hem of Superman’s sleeve under the cover of his bulky suit.

 

She’d known him for years now. Through the fleeting flirtation, companionable competitiveness, and secrets that slipped with his sleeves, she liked to think they were close. Close enough to know his ruffled, nervous, posture wasn’t due to Perry’s idle threats, his looming deadline, or the impossible amount of pheromones his omega had somehow chaffed into his indestructible pores.

 

“Let me guess,” she muttered as she riddled out the last few tangled words. “You asked her on a date and she said she was just using you for her heats?”

 

Clark bit his bottom lip and turned his head aside.

 

Lois groaned. “You didn’t even ask, did you?”

 

The look he gave could have been printed in the dictionary beside the word ‘guilty’.

 

“You really are a lost cause,” she said with a sigh and finally finished editing her article. She popped it proudly into the drop box on the Daily Planet server and leant back to stretch her aching fingers.

 

Clark had opened up a blank page in a word processor and chewed his lip distractedly. As she watched he came up with an idea and – glancing around to make sure no one other than her was watching – plugged it into the computer as fast as the keyboard could process it. Thirty seconds later he had an article completely void of the jagged red lines that seemed to dog her writing wherever it went.

 

“Screw flying,” she muttered, “I want your million words a minute power.”

 

“Could you look it over for me?”

 

She levied herself up and walked around their crashed together desks to lean over his shoulder and quickly skim read over the strings of words lining his computer screen. This close the mating musk marking his skin was even more evident; a strangely sweet scent carried by a hungry heavy undertone. His firm and familiar alpha smell mixed with a dark and deadly new aroma.

 

“Mmm… nice.”

 

“You think so?”

 

“I…” she focused on the article. “Yes it’s…. ugh, no it’s terrible.”

 

He blinked back at her in hurt. “I thought it was okay.”

 

“It’s okay, sure,” she said. “Better than that garbage they post across the road. Compared to your usual? It’s terrible.” She studied the words for a moment. “You’re using too much passive tense, shorten this whole bit down to a sentence or two, and that bit there is what you remember Flash telling you, not what our source said.” She pursed her lips. “Also, it’s a bit bland. Where is your angle? Your hook? Where are you going with this?”

 

“I’ll fix it,” he mumbled miserably.

 

He did. The article limped through onto the bottom half of page eight and the last line was accidentally docked in print. His next article wasn’t any better. The one after that was worse. He missed a meeting to pull people out of a natural disaster zone in Vietnam and didn’t manage to write the report before other papers went to print with the story. That night Perry marched the man into his office as everyone else ambled out the door and spoke to him. Quietly.

 

When he emerged his face was fallow.

 

“Hey,” she said softly. “What’s the verdict?”

 

He shrugged. “I’m not fired.”

 

“But?”

 

“One more month. If I haven’t produced something good in one month…”

 

“You need a story.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“But more importantly you need to fix whatever is messing you up,” she added.

 

A brief pause. Clark raked his hand though his hair and for a moment Superman’s split curl tumbled in plain sight down his brow before it was once again lost among the messy tangle of his hair.

 

“Yeah,” he muttered, eyes tortured.


	4. Chapter 4

Jason hated Wayne Manor.

 

He hated the stark lawns, the echoing hallways, and the secrets chipped and chiselled into the stone façade. He hated the overbearing architecture, the endless empty rooms, and the way the portraits of long dead ancestors watched him as he walked by. Watched him with the same steel eyed darkness he saw mirrored in Bruce’s eyes. Like they were critically evaluating his every movement – taking his measure – and finding him lacking.

 

But the thing he hated most about Wayne Manor was the smell. Bruce’s smell. The unrelenting siren call of an unclaimed omega made worse by the extreme high level of hormone count. An almost sickeningly sweet scent filled with a rich intoxicating allure that was Bruce. Dark, demanding, and dangerous. It packed the air, leached into the brickwork, and stuck to the furniture hours after the man had left it. It was everywhere, it was inescapable, and it was so beautiful, so addictively delicious, it was impossible not to breathe it in as deeply as he dared.

 

To court the errant fantasy of his old mentor high in heat, and his.

 

To imagine the indomitable Batman bent over and begging.

 

To pretend for just a moment he could satisfy or even surpass the impossible standards the man set for him.

 

But he couldn’t.

 

Nothing he did would ever be enough for Bruce. Nothing he did would ever be right. He was the errant robin, the failure. The Red Hood. He was the wild card, the unhinged alpha, the stray that was allowed shelter as long as he behaved.

 

He was not, and never would be, a worthy mate.

 

Unlike Superman.

 

Superman who slipped in and seduced Bruce Wayne while everyone’s backs were turned. Superman who stained Bruce’s scent with the arid alien tang. Superman who was extraordinary in every way… except his hormone levels. He was a _mid_ level alpha. An average alpha. Yet somehow he was still better than Jason.

 

“Hey.”

 

Jason opened his eyes.

 

He lay on the lawn behind the spires of the mansion under a gritty grey sky. Nearby a few bats shrieked and chattered in the branches of an aging tree. Dick stood on the cropped green grass, hands in the pockets of an oversized hoodie, and bare feet poking out from the hem of his jeans.

 

“What do you want?” Jason grunted.

 

Dick shrugged. “I don’t have a job anymore. I don’t really know what to do with all this free time.”

 

Jason snorted. “You’re unemployed. Go get drunk.”

 

“Is that what you’re doing out here?”

 

“Sure,” he said, “why not.”

 

He was out here to steal a quick reprieve from the oppressively beautiful yet cruelly unattainable scent of the man buried in open and unsolved criminal cases inside. At that moment, getting drunk didn’t seem like a half bad idea.

 

“Do… you have anything?” Dick asked as he edged closer. “A drink, I mean.”

 

“No.”

 

“Oh.”

 

The small soft explanation hung unusually heavy in the air. It was so unlike the smooth confidant cheek Dick usually delivered. So different from the cheerful chatty boy he had succeeded. So estranged from everything he was used to hearing from him.

 

“Fuck’s wrong with you?”

 

“What?”

 

“What the fuck is wrong with you?”

 

Dick frowned and looked down at his feet. “Nothing.”

 

Jason interlocked his fingers and pillowed his hands behind his head. “You’re a shit liar,” he said.

 

Dick looked up and scowled. “What’s wrong with you?”

 

“Nothing.”

 

“You’re a shit liar too.”

 

Jason shifted where he lay against the grass. “I guess we’re both shit liars then.”

 

“Yeah, I guess.”

 

Dick hesitated for a moment before stepping forward and sitting down on the grass beside where he lay. He looked down across the sweeping gardens, into the forest, and over the cliffs towards the rolling grey of the sea beyond. A small pleat folded the skin between his eyebrows.

 

“You shouldn’t have walked out on breakfast the other day, you know.”

 

Jason grunted.

 

“I mean it. I don’t want you guys to fight anymore. I know you’re an alpha and he’s an omega but he’s also a good leader and this is… it’s a good pack. A good family sometimes as well. Small, I guess, but… good." He sucked in a deep breath and let it out with a sigh. "And I know you don't want to hear this but it’s also good that he’d finally letting someone near him in heat. I don’t know if you ever saw this but when he used to go at it alone all those suppressants would sometimes make him sick. Really sick. They’re not meant to be for every heat, year after year but he’s a high level. He can’t just… just weather it like some other omegas. And the safer stuff did nothing for him.” Dick shook his head. “Man it scared me when I first saw him get sick off that shit. I was… eleven? Fuck, I don’t know. I thought he was dying.”

 

Jason didn’t say anything. Watched the slow slither of cloud across the sky.

 

“Then Alfred told me what was happening,” Dick continued. “Didn’t really help. I spent the next few years up until puberty going to sleep terrified I’d wake up an omega.” A grim smile snaked across his features. “Funny, huh? As a kid being an omega was my worst nightmare. Now…”

 

“You want to be a bitch?” Jason rumbled.

 

Dick laughed. Nervous and high. “No. Not exactly.”

 

“You either want to or you don’t.”

 

“I… no. It’s not that simple.”

 

“Yes it is.”

 

“Come on,” Dick scoffed and flopped down beside him. “Don’t you sometimes wonder what it would be like to… be something else?”

 

“No.”

 

“What about when you were a kid? Before you knew you were an alpha?”

 

“I always knew.”

 

“Seriously though.”

 

“Seriously.”

 

Dick frowned. “How?”

 

“My parents got me tested when I was four,” he answered.

 

A deeper frown. “That’s illegal.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

Shortly after medical science became advanced enough to detect a child’s caste from early age there had been an epidemic of abandonment, child trafficking, and even some genital mutilation and castration around the world. In some cultures where alphas were considered dangerous a massive number of baby alphas were killed. In other countries first born omegas suffered the same fate. Further around the globe cults sprung up with the purpose of eradicating the ‘weak’ beta gene and breeding a master race of only alphas and omegas. Omega sex slaves were kidnapped and trained from disgustingly young ages.

 

The bill that made this kind of testing on a child illegal unless medically necessary followed shortly after.

 

“Was it one of those illegal clinics?” Dick asked. “I know Bruce has busted some but I’ve never seen one. Must be fucked up.”

 

“It was in our living room.”

 

“How did they get the MRI up there?”

 

“They didn’t use an MRI.”         

 

“Do I want to know?”

 

“I don’t know,” Jason sneered. “Do you?”

 

They lay, side by side, in silence for a moment. The distant sounds of the city trickled through the trees and were swallowed by a salty gust of wind that crashed over the cliffs.

 

Dick smelt good for a beta, Jason noticed. His low level left him with a hint of omega, just a freeing flirtatious fragrance rather than the mind altering musk that practically dripped off Bruce. It enriched the moist sea air and the floated off him with every tiny movement. Soft and sweet as a sigh.

 

“I’m sorry,” Dick said after a while. “I forget sometimes. My childhood was pretty nice in the circus.”

 

Jason flashed him a toothy grin. “There’s a difference between the circus and the streets, idiot.”

 

“Yeah, I guess there is.”

 

The nearby bats screeched wildly as the first scattered drops of rain plummeted to the ground. A few dropped from the branches to fly in a messy flap of leathery wings into one of the many cave mouths in the cliff face. Jason waited until the rain started to fall evenly before standing to walk back towards the manor. Dick waited with him and walked back wordlessly by his side, bare feet stroking the cropped grass.

 

“It’s nice out here,” he said as they mounted the steps towards the kitchen door. “The air is clean.”

 

“Yeah,” Jason muttered as he steeled himself for the scent of the house. “It is.”

 

Dick gave him a funny look and pushed inside. Jason stole the briefest moment to wonder what it was like being a beta, able to smell, to a lesser degree, the scents of others but not be controlled and compelled by them. If he were a beta he wouldn’t have to walk around with everyone’s eyes on him; the distrustful alphas, curious betas, and interested omegas. If he was a beta he could change his pack dynamic on a whim. If he… he caught the fantasy and quickly crushed the life from it. It was just Dick’s stupid ramblings getting to him. Just Dick.

 

He stepped inside.

 

“Nice day for it,” Alfred commented dryly as he shrugged off his wet jacket. “Would you like something to eat, young masters?”

 

“I got it,” Dick called as he fished some ham and cheese out of the fridge.

 

“I’m fine,” Jason growled as he strode past.

 

“Hey!” Dick followed him with a poorly built sandwich in his hands. “Do you want to do some training?”

 

“No.”

 

“Come on, we never train together. We could spar.”

 

“I would kick your arse,” Jason grunted.

 

“Really?” A touch of Dick’s usual cheek slipped back into his voice. “I’ve seen how you play now, baby bird. Guns, guns, and more guns. I don’t think a cannon head like you could put me down once without anything in your hand.”

 

“Don’t call me baby bird.”

 

“Why not?” Dick said innocently. “We were both Robins and I am the oldest.”

 

“I understood the reference,” Jason said. “Don’t do it again.”

 

“How about this,” Dick mused. “Knock me over in the first five minutes and the nickname is gone.” A sharp smile. “Sound good, _baby bird?_ ”

 

He’d never been much good at resisting a challenge.

 

Twenty minutes later they were both down in one of the training rooms attached to the cave and stripped to their shirts and trousers. No belts, boots, or baggy sleeves. The hardest part about fighting Dick, Jason recalled after the first thirty seconds of watching the man flip and bound around their makeshift arena, was catching him. Dick was fast and fluid; able to land a brutal volley of blows and duck and dance out of the way before receiving a single one in return.

 

Jason had both his forearms either side of his head and was blocking the quick uppercuts, kicks, and jabs the other man was throwing his direction when Dick spoke, voice at odds with the violent motion of his body.

 

“I’ll probably regret asking this but, really, how did your parents ‘test’ you. Was it an ultrasound?”

 

“In part,” Jason grunted.

 

“But they can only really see uteruses, right?” Dick pushed him. “And male omega’s uteruses are sometimes hard to find. Tucked away pretty good before puberty, I hear.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“So,” Dick feinted to one side and then attacked from the other. “They did an ultrasound and found no uterus. What did they do after that? How did they find out you were an alpha and not a beta or an omega with a hiding body organ?”

 

Jason caught the attack used the momentum to stagger his opponent. “Drugs,” he answered.

 

Dick blinked as he regained his balance. “What drugs?”

 

Jason slipped under his defence and slammed the heel of his palm into his sternum, not hard enough to break it but hard enough to hurt.

 

“Hormone shots mixed with some early strain of venom most likely,” he said. “Give a baby enough hormones and it’ll grow breasts. Same principle here but they were looking for glands. An omega gland or some alpha glands. Or no special glands for a beta.”

 

Dick was backing away now, blocking and dodging his attacks with his bottom lip held between his teeth.

 

“So, they overdosed you with adult alpha hormones and watched the result?” He muttered. “That’s messed up.”

 

“Alpha and omega,” Jason corrected him. “My dad was sure my neck was going to swell and I was going to go down wet between the legs. He’s too pretty, he told them. He’s too pretty; he’s got to be a bitch. He always said that. I think it was the first time I ever really surprised him when I started coughing up alpha salvia instead.”

 

“Fuck,” Dick gasped as Jason landed a blow.

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Do you remember all that?”

 

“Most of it.”

 

“Fuck.”

 

Jason tried to sweep his legs but Dick cart wheeled clear and spun a roundhouse kick towards his face. Jason caught his foot and flipped the man onto his back only to lose him as Dick rolled and away and onto his feet.

 

“At the time,” Jason heard himself continue, not quite sure why. “I thought it was what he wanted. Even at that age I knew alpha was better than omega.”

 

Dick didn’t comment. Just jabbed low at his ribs.

 

“Now,” Jason continued as he blocked. “I think he wanted me to be an omega.”

 

The other man threw a volley of punches towards him. He took them as best he could and returned with a series of his own strikes, feints, and blows.

 

“He was in deep with Black Mask. I don’t know what he did; if he was a shitty gambler, a shitty thief, or a shitty drunk. But he had a debt and he couldn’t pay. I reckon he figured if I was an omega I would have been something he could sell.” Jason shrugged. “He ran off soon after that. Left us, which wouldn’t be so bad, but mum was an omega and I was a kid and we were in The Narrows. She disappeared when I was eight and Bruce caught me stealing the tires from the batmobile a few months later. I suppose you already know all that though.”

 

“Yeah,” Dick said, looking at him strangely, “I suppose I do.”

 

He took that moment to dive forward and tackle him to the ground. Dick went over and blinked up at him in surprise as he was pinned. His eyes, Jason noticed, were a misty twilight blue framed with long feathery lashes.

 

“I guess you got me,” Dick said, sending a gush of heated air against his cheek.

 

“I guess I did.”

 

His tongue slid nervously along his top lip. “Was that five minutes?”

 

“I don’t know,” Jason muttered.

 

Dick stared up at him for a long moment, hesitating, and then leant slowly forward.

 

Jason sucked in a slow breath, swore, and shrugged himself off the other man. He stood and started pacing back and forth.

 

“Get up,” he growled.

 

Dick looked sadly confused. He lay, hair flared around his face, and lips slightly parted. “What?”

 

“Get up!”

 

“But…”

 

“The clock is up there. We’ll make sure it’s less than five minutes this time.”

 

Dick sat up. “If… if you want to.”

 

“Yes, I want to! Get up!”

 

Dick’s eyes found Bruce and a cold, reserved, understanding filtered across his gaze. He looked down and slowly levied himself onto his feet. “Fine.”

 

Bruce leant in the doorway, arms crossed, and smelling for all the world like the richest sweetest delicacy on the face of the planet. The alien’s arid alpha stench had burnt down to a nub and the brutally unchastened omega scent of the man unfurled around him like the petals of a rose and assaulted Jason’s wearied and worn defences.

 

As he and Dick spared he felt Bruce’s eyes on him; dark and critical. Unsatisfied. Never enough for him. Nothing was ever enough for him. Nothing would ever satisfy him, nothing would ever change the way he looked at him, and nothing would wipe away that masked disappointment in his gaze. A disappointment Jason knew was there even if the man denied it every time he opened his doors to him. Every time he told him to come home.

 

Home to the constricting cage, to the sweet torment, of Wayne Manor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry that took a bit too long. And... for the perhaps unwanted insight into some of the darker elements of this Omega Verse.
> 
> Also, is everyone following okay with the terminology, biology, etc? Or would people be keen on an index? I may have made a chart... and a diagram... and a few other things.


	5. Chapter 5

He wouldn’t do it.

 

He couldn’t.

 

He couldn’t just… just stop.

 

He couldn’t leave.

 

He couldn’t leave Bruce.

 

Not now.

 

Clark drifted through space. The momentum of his lunge through the atmosphere carrying him sleepily forward. His cape sprawled and tangled like a bed sheet on a hot night. Stars shone unashamed around him; sprinkled like breadcrumbs in the vast black emptiness beyond the welcoming warmth of the sun.

 

He was stuck.

 

Stuck in love with the most banefully beautiful being on the planet.

 

The infamous Bruce Wayne. The ultimate wolf in sheep’s clothing. The scandalous, secretive, seductive creature that had claimed him with the ease of a predatory snake absently plucking prey from within a hypnotised flock of followers.

 

Powerful not despite his sexual caste but because of it; the raw unchastened orientation of the man a weapon as deadly and dangerous as the one he’d made of his body.

 

And he loved him for it. For everything. For every time he spoke, and for every silence. For the secrets told and the secrets kept. For the skin and the scars. For the kisses that could stop his heart… but never quite did.

 

It was the realisation that had undone him. Trapped him. Stuck him. He’d been in love with Bruce for a long time. He’d loved him since… since he thought the man was an irritating alpha intent on forcing him through the most ridiculous training he could conceive. It had been fragile then. A flicker of a flame. Now it was an inferno. A slow burn love that brought a warm wholeness to his heart whenever the other man was nearby.

 

He couldn’t leave that.

 

Even if Bruce would never, or could never, return that love. He couldn’t step away. Not unless Bruce pushed him.

 

Not for a job he loved. Not for all the money in the world.

 

No matter how much it hurt to give up a dream in the pursuit of… he wasn’t sure. He wasn’t sure what possible happy ending there was at the end of this road. He wasn’t sure what he hoped to gain. But he wasn’t willing to give it up.

 

And if that meant he couldn’t manage to write articles at the Daily… God but he wanted both. All he had to do was write one article, one damned article, and he could have both. But somehow, he couldn’t even manage that right now. He could rip open the earth, fly faster than anything else he knew, but he couldn’t write a single block of words to save his suddenly floundering career.

 

He wanted not to love Bruce so this would be easy, and everything could go on unchanged. He wanted not to love working at the Daily Planet so he could walk out without leaving pieces of himself behind. He wanted not to love either so everything could be cold and quiet and easy. He wanted…

 

Someone screamed.

 

He jerked as if he had been strung and shoved aside the messy sprawl of his cape to blink back at the planet behind him. It had been sharp, shrill, and loud enough to be on the side of the planet facing him. A single, frantic, cry for help.

 

His eyes flicked urgently between the cities staring up at him. From Metropolis to Mexico he became aware of a million lives; some soft and serene, others punctured and painful. A boy was crying over the body of a three legged dog in the streets of Havana, two children giggled as they bounced down a hillside balanced on an aged bike in Denver, and a woman screamed abuse at her boyfriend as she staggered drunk down an alley in San Antonio. A group of teenagers were smashing a rose garden with whoops of delight on the outskirts of Central City, a circle of students laughed loudly as they studied in Metropolis, and two men grunted as they grappled in a messy fight in the middle of an old highway striking down through the desert. A young girl cried because her shoes were giving her blisters.

 

Clark focused on her as she shrieked and screamed.

 

Relaxed.

 

She was safe. It was just…

 

The scream came again. Pitched and panicked. Not from the girl.

 

He bolted blindly towards the sound, furiously filtering through thousands of lives as he tried to lock onto the pair of lips that cried for help. He shot from city to city. Town to town. Hundred of thousands of lives continued indifferent below him.

 

Once more. Please just scream once more.

 

A cough.

 

He froze, frowned. Was it the same voice? It sounded simular but… where?

 

The sound came again and he had his answer.

 

Chicago. A fire latched hungrily onto the side of an apartment building, spat thick chunky streams of black smoke into the air, and trapped a young woman in a tiny bathroom. She was heaping a blanket into the sink and desperately trying to soak it with scorched red fingers. The fire was rapidly climbing up the peeling wallpaper and flooding the tiny room with smoke. The stairway beyond had collapsed leaving her trapped.

 

He swooped low over the startled firemen assembled at the scene and used his heat vision to carve a new door through the brick wall. The construction tumbled into the empty alley below and he drifted in to scoop up the startled woman.

 

“It’s okay. Have you ever flown before?”

 

“I…”

 

She gasped as he carried her out through his newly created exit and floated down to deliver her to the firemen below. A boyfriend shoved aside the yellow clad service men and snatched the woman, still blinking owlishly, into a crushing hug.

 

“Thank you, Superman.”

 

A parade of other soot stained survivors already sat on the sidewalk started staggering to their feet at the sight of his S.

 

“Superman!”

 

He ignored them and scanned the building, looking for any other heartbeats. There were five.

 

He lifted off the ground and slipped through a gaping window where an explosion had blown out the frame and floated over a flaming kitchen and into the hall beyond. A young girl, no more than four, stood with a plastic pail of water and stared at the trickling flames as if unsure what she should do with her cargo. He swept her into his arms and continued into the other room to scoop up her unconscious father. The third had made it to the roof and dropped with a shriek onto a trampoline the firemen had set up as he deposited the first two on the ground and returned to rescue an aged man trapped in his room and furiously batting the flames with a pillowcase shrieking in garbled Russian.

 

The fifth heartbeat belonged to a man. He stood in the stairwell outside an apartment staring in stunned horror at a ball of fire that used to be the doorway. His key was in his hands, outstretched, and frozen.

 

“Sir.”

 

No response.

 

“Sir!” He called over the roar of the flames.

 

The man spun around and snarled. The growl of an alpha defending their territory.

 

“We need to get you out of here,” Clark said, coming to a stop. “The building is on fire.”

 

The man ignored him and turned back around to stare at the hungry tongues of flames. His eyes were too wide, cheeks dancing between fallow and full with every strangled breath, and sweat falling unchecked down his brow.

 

“Sir!”

 

He floated forward and laid a careful hand on his shoulder. The man lunged at him, fingers bunched into tight fists, and teeth flashing strangely in the haunting light. Clark quickly caught the blows, wrapped an arm around his torso, and hauled him struggling into the air.

 

A panicked look spiked in his eyes. “No!”

 

“It’s okay,” Clark muttered, ignoring the aggressive outpour of alpha battle pheromones, and pulled him out of the building. They floated for a moment outside the flaming building as he roared and wriggled in Clark’s grip. When he was sure he wouldn’t slip from his fists Clark dropped to the street below. The man froze the second his feet touched tarmac.

 

“That’s the last of them,” Clark told the firemen. “Do you need help putting out the…”

 

“No,” the man croaked. “No. I’m not… I’m not the… she’s still…” he staggered back against the side of the nearest fire truck, clawed at his face, and gasped for breath. A paramedic appeared, winkled her nose, and quickly fished out an omega hormone shot from her bag. Omega hormones would calm a panicked or aggressive alpha. It started to work moments after the needle was removed from his neck.

 

The medic marched on to tend to others.

 

Clark watched as the man’s dry heaving melted into sobs and he slumped down onto the road, ignored by all but him. He wore a rumbled suit and tie, shoes worn almost through at the soles, and narrow face covered with the rough shadow of stubble. There was a wedding band on his finger. Red rimmed eyes saw him watching.

 

“She goes into heat today,” he rasped. “That’s… she always cooks when she nests. Never eats. Just cooks. Pancakes, sausages, stir fries, noodles, sometimes even gravy. Everything in the apartment she can find. I tell her she shouldn’t do that. I-if she went into heat while the stove… if she…” he buried his face in his hands.

 

Clark felt the colour leach from his skin.

 

He felt suddenly strangely sick and wrong, like someone had reached inside him and moved everything just slightly so it wasn’t quite right, so it wouldn’t quite work the way it was supposed to.

 

“I’m sorry,” he muttered.

 

The man didn’t answer. Didn’t look up.

 

He left.

 

The firemen had it under control and he couldn’t stomach staying there anymore. So he pretended another emergency and left.

 

It was cowardly but, in that moment, it was all he could do.

 

The fight between the two men on the old highway had turned ugly. One was gone and the other lay on the side of the road nursing a broken arm. Clark dropped down and with a media smile helped him into his car and carried it to the police station in the nearest town. He stopped there to mindlessly sign a string of autographs and absently hoped no one pushed a legal document in front of him. Somewhere beyond the horizon the girl was still crying about her shoes.

 

Sometimes he hated the world.

 

He hated what it did, what it would do, and what it had done… to people he didn’t know and to people he loved.

 

Most of all what it had done to Bruce.

 

He hated that he had to bare witness to it, that around its swayed dance with the moon it would never sleep, and that it still hurt when he didn’t save everyone.

 

He hated the endless frivolous screams that drowned out the cries for help, he hated the muddied mess of sound, and he hated a woman he’d never met for not letting her daughter take off her damn shoes.

 

He realised he’d signed Clark Kent and quickly tore the page out of the startled boy’s notebook and with an apologetic smile signed a jagged Superman instead. Then he was stumbling through a string of farewells, and then flying, and then he cried though he wasn’t quite sure if he had the right, and then he was with Bruce.

 

“Clark? What the h—”

 

“Please, Bruce,” Clark heard himself mutter. “Please I… it’s been a shit day. Please.”

 

He knelt at the man’s feet, arms wrapped around his waist, and forehead pressed against his abdomen.

 

“Get off me, Clark.” Low. Angry.

 

“Please,” it was a pitiful whine made worse as he heedlessly turned his gaze up to meet the sharp steel blue of the other man’s eyes with a sorry look. Bruce glared down at him in unmasked irritation, clearly having been caught on route between locations. Withheld from his unspoken destination by the indestructible clamp of his low embrace.

 

Bruce almost always demanded he submit in some form or another before private physical contact. Kneeling was the most profound posture of submission between sexual partners. Most often performed by omegas to their alphas, it was another pleasure and privilege conventionally denied to omegas that Bruce took without apprehension or apology.

 

When he’d bolted around the corner and seen him advancing down the hall he’d rushed forward to snatch him up in a crushing hug even as another part of his brain desperately tried to reel him back and remember the rules and restrictions Bruce lay on their relationship. The result had been a bit of both. He’d stolen him in his hug but also stumbled to his knees as he did so.

 

Now, Bruce frowned as he regarded him, on his knees, with Bruce’s pelvis crushed against his chest. He reached down to roughly seize Clark’s jaw, lift it off his abdomen, and twist his head uncomfortably back. He blinked up at him as Bruce slid his thumb slowly from the point of his cheekbone, through the hollow in his cheek and down to trail over his lips. A nervous string of hope knotted in his stomach and he greedily sucked that thumb into his mouth and swallowed suggestively around it.

 

For a long time now Bruce had been important enough to drown out the world.

 

The endless noise of a living planet dialled down to a soft murmur beside the strong steady beat of his heart and the lyrical response rising from the rest of his body. His breath, blood, and body all underscored by the unwavering thud thud in his chest.

 

Bruce jerked his hand back with a ragged growl and Clark quickly unwound his arms to begin grappling with the front of his pants.

 

“Clark…”

 

“Please,” he grunted. “Please just let me…” he trailed off as he wrestled the other man’s clothes open and released the soft length of his penis. He stole a moment to marvel at the simple beauty of the other man’s anatomy. Even limp Bruce’s penis was a perfect pale piece of him; crowned in a flower like fold of foreskin, surrounded in skin like satin, and yet also full of devilish promise. Beautiful. So beautiful.

 

Clark looked up, silently asking permission. Bruce hesitated, glanced around, and swore. Clark saw the irritation in his eyes and began to edge back when a fist tangled in his hair and yanked his face forward. He missed the head of his shaft as he lurched uncontrolled towards Bruce’s exposed groin. Licked his balls instead. Messy. Needy. Happy.

 

He hadn’t intended this when he’d flown over the now familiar cliffs and caves towards the jagged spires of the Wayne Manor. He hadn’t planned this when he’d crashed through the kitchen door and swept up the stairs towards the other man. He wasn’t even sure he’d had it in mind to dive uninvited back into Bruce’s life less than a week after the other man’s callous use of him. But it had happened and he couldn’t bring himself to do anything but rejoice in the moment, thrill at the success of his instigation, and close his eyes against the fractured remnants of the last day’s failures and regrets still lurking inside his skull.

 

None it mattered in the wake of this man. None of it was important beside Bruce.

 

He sucked one testicle inside his mouth and gently tongued the soft crinkled skin of his sack, unhinged his jaw to welcome in the second, and groaned as he felt Bruce’s fingers tighten in his hair. After a while he released the man’s balls to select the sliver of raised skin skimming the surface of his scrotum and suck it between his teeth. Tugged and teased the flesh taunt, on the verge of damage, before releasing.

 

“Fuck…” Bruce panted. His left hand joined his right in his hair.

 

Clark felt the heat of his hardening shaft against his cheek and reached up to fist it as he lapped at the now low hanging balls with unabashed satisfaction. Bruce was trying not to groan as Clark kneaded the head of his cock and that fact made the strangled sounds that escaped him all the more delicious.

 

Clark didn’t know how long he stayed like that, stoking Bruce’s rapidly swelling member and furiously tonguing his testicles. It could have been hours, he wouldn’t have noticed, or cared.

 

“Suck,” Bruce snarled suddenly, yanking Clark’s head back. “Suck me.”

 

As usual with all their encounters Bruce set the pace and parameters. He demanded and dominated him, even in this, and Clark loved him all the more for it.

 

He loved him because, as he obediently gulped down the purpling head and shaft of the other man he could, in however a small a way, let go. He could forget about the abuses of the world and concentrate on Bruce, just Bruce, and the feel of his cock hard and heavy in his mouth, the taste of his arousal an aphrodisiac beyond compare, and the scent of his skin a carnal pleasure, as intimate in its familiarity as the action he performed.

 

He ran his tongue along the underside of Bruce’s cock, encouraging him to come in deeper. Bruce seized upon the invitation and Clark dropped his jaw as far as he could as the man rocked into him. Clark knew he was drooling but didn’t care. He reached around to grasp Bruce’s arse with both hands, feeling the taunt shape of his flesh through the fabric of his pants, and pushed him into his mouth and then pulled him back out. The blunt head of his cock assaulted the back of his throat.

 

Bruce growled, low and deep. “You want me to fuck your mouth?”

 

Clark hummed deep in his throat, an undeniable yes, and watched as Bruce’s already fractured composure crumbled further.

 

Bruce began to thrust into him, encouraged by the tug of Clark’s hands, and anchored by his own fists still clutching at his hair. Clark swallowed around him on every stroke, scraped his tongue against the underside of his shaft, and squeezed the firm shape of his arse on the retreat. It became a pattern that broke down only as Bruce began to near climax.

 

Clark sucked him once more, long and hard, and Bruce thrust fast and frantic into him. He came with a groan that lived and died trapped behind gritted teeth. His cock twitched and released inside Clark’s mouth. Clark watched the pressed and private orgasm with a touch of reproach as he remembered the raw throated cries he would win from behind the glazed eyes, swollen lips, and red cheeks of the man in heat.

 

“Fuck you suck cock good,” Bruce rasped as he drifted down from his peak.

 

Clark dropped his hands, let the spent organ slip from his open mouth, and cautiously licked his lips before swallowing. “You’re wet,” he commented carefully. Hopefully.

 

He could smell it. Not the run-down-the-leg kind of wet an omega would get in heat, but wet all the same.

 

Bruce scowled and briskly tucked himself away. “That isn’t a fucking invitation,” he snapped.

 

“I’m sorry,” Clark mumbled.

 

He’d expected it. He was rarely allowed to top Bruce in that way outside of heat and the situation they were in, however unexpectedly sexual, didn’t beg for a prolonged experience.

 

Bruce eyed him critically for a moment. “Get up,” he grunted, and Clark obeyed. Stood silently under the scrutinizing stare of the other man. Of the omega. “You have ash on you,” Bruce said at last.

 

Clark looked down at himself and the small smudges of grey and black marring the blue of his uniform at red of his cape. A sooty handprint was pressed against the crest on his chest. The tell tale signs of the people he’d saved, and the bleak reminder of the one he hadn't.

 

“Yes,” he said softly.

 

“You said you had a bad day,” Bruce continued, voice more calculating than curious. “What happened?”

 

“Just work.”

 

“Which work?”

 

“Both work.”

 

Bruce’s eyes flicked over every feature on his face as if he were a puzzle that needed to be solved. Clark shifted uncomfortably under the scrutiny. “I… I’m sorry if I… I just needed…”

 

“It’s Fine.”

 

Clark blinked. “Fine?”

 

“That is what we use each other for, isn’t it?” Bruce rumbled. “Need?”

 

He flinched.

 

Again those eyes were on him, decoding and deciphering every tiny flicker of facial movement. Clark had to bow his head and look away under the beautiful, brilliant, intensity of his gaze. He couldn’t look into Bruce’s eyes, not while the man was studying him like this, and hide the truth from him. Hide from him that he loved him. And if Bruce knew that would be the end. He would construct a million walls between them before Clark could explain and in a moment his one sided love affair would be over.

 

He couldn’t let it be over. Not… not yet. No matter how amoral it might be to keep his feelings hidden in the light of their unspoken arrangement.

 

He couldn’t just… leave.

 

Bruce grunted in irritation at the denial and stepped around him to continue down the hall towards whatever Clark destination had delayed him from. A sudden terrifying thought occurred to him as the man passed and he spun around and grabbed his arm.

 

“Bruce, I… when you nest do you…”

 

Bruce watched him, eyes flicking down to his captured arm and back to his face.

 

“… I know this is strange but when you nest, do you cook?”

 

Eyes narrowed. “Why?”

 

“I… it’s… for an article,” he lied.

 

“I’m not going on record.”

 

“No, I’m just bouncing an idea around and…” he let go of his arm. “It’s not important.”

 

Bruce frowned at him, looked where he had been going, and looked back. Finally, after a long pause, he slowly shook his head first to one side and then the other.

 

“Thank you,” Clark muttered in relief. “Thank you.” _Thank you, God._ “That really helps.”

 

The man frowned at him and after a stretched silence turned away and began to walk slowly, stiffly, down the corridor. “Go home, Clark,” he said softly. “I’m not good at dealing with bad days.”


	6. Chapter 6

_God damn you, Clark._

 

Bruce shed the last pieces of his armour, dropped them carelessly on the floor of the batcave, and stepped under the pressurised shower stream prepped and waiting for him. The soapy water stung as it stuck his bruised and battered body, turned pink and grey as it washed the blood and grit off his skin, and swallowed the secretive stench of Batman’s scentless mask with a gurgle down the drain. He scrubbed at himself and inhaled as slowly the smell of his skin returned to normal; the luscious sweet scent of an omega curling crisp and clear through the steam.

 

_God damn you to hell._

 

The memories that had been haunting him all night circled back through his brain. Clark on his knees, hair windswept, and cheeks slightly too pink. Clark fumbling with the front of his pants, movement uncharacteristically clumsy, and eyes wide and pleading. Clark with his lips pursed tight around his shaft, cheek spread around the shape of his cock, and alpha smelling salvia dripping unembarrassed down his bottom lip. Uncaring. Completely uncaring of how exposed they were and of how… how _taboo_ it was for an alpha to do that to an omega. To beg for it and receive it with such wanton greed.

 

He slammed his fist into the wall.

 

_God damn you!_

 

The man had been invading his thoughts for far too long now. He was a distraction he couldn’t afford. Not as the streets riled under his rule, not as Batman was baited by colourful criminals, and not as he finally managed to find an equilibrium between his caste and his cowl. He couldn’t let his fascination - his addiction - to the man steal his attention from his mission. Not for a moment.

 

But he couldn’t ignore him either. Not the man, not the ally, and not what he was doing for him.

 

Clark was helping him. He was _helping him_.

 

For the first time since donning the cape and cowl he could hunt the streets free of the headaches the suppressants would leave him with, he could cut the incriminating umbilical cord of high strength alpha hormone shots pilfered through his own company, and he could live in anticipation of his heat, not in fear of it. More. Clark’s presence - his strength, his safety, and his willing submission – held him up in ways he never thought possible. With Clark he was powerful. Powerful in a way that wasn’t constructed with scent dampeners and false assumptions. Powerful in a way that didn’t need to be proved. Powerful because of the unexplainable _rightness_ between them.

 

A rightness that had been undeniable as Clark clutched him and sucked him and took him and watched him with eyes so blue and unfathomably beautiful they could disarm him with a look.

 

Too fucking gorgeous.

 

_Damn you…_

 

He leant against the wall, felt the water gush over him, and closed his eyes as he reached down to fist his cock at the thought of Clark.

 

They had been friends for years, yet while he had always been attractive, somehow he had also been deniable. When they’d first met he’d even secretly scoffed at the idea of mating the man. He was a mid level alpha with a singularity to his scent that had verged on boring before he’d gotten to know him. Now, through the fragile foothold of the bond he courted between them, or perhaps Clark’s strangely enabling alpha sexuality, the man had become more wholeheartedly appealing than any other member of his domineering caste.

 

The thought terrified him.

 

He was becoming addicted. Both hormonally and to the man himself. An addiction required dependence and he had never depended on an alpha before. Not for anything. He couldn’t.

 

But he depended on Clark.

 

It was too late to deny that fact however much he wanted to.

 

Brazenly unmasked in all scent, costume, and self; boldly inhumanly beautiful; and safe. The only truly safe alpha he had ever known.

 

He groaned as he came into his hands, pleasure dragged from him with a debilitating delicious surge of hypersensitivity. He became keenly aware of the cool press of the wall where he leant against it, the stinging heat of the water stabbing into his skin, and the extra flush of warmth that trickled treacherously from between his legs.

 

Clark’s tentative words from earlier thundered through his memories.

 

_“You’re wet.”_

 

He didn’t used to get wet so easily. It was not a part of his body he would usually stimulate on his own nor was it one he very readily explored with partners before Clark. Even then outside of heat he rarely let the Kryptonian touch him there.

 

Cautiously Bruce reached around and probed his entrance. The contact sent a violent jolt through him, the blood in his veins flaring hot like ignited petroleum. He gasped and jerked his hand away, shocked by the intensity of his reaction. A fresh trickle of sweet smelling slick lingered on his fingertips and a distant echo of the hollow ache he felt during heat sprang to life low inside him.

 

Water continued to rain down against him; turning his skin a fiery pink, the vent whirred above; collecting the steam, and the drain gurgled as if with laughter.

 

Bruce gritted his teeth and turned to lean his chest against the wall, forearm cushioning his forehead. He thought of the way Clark would probe him during heat; touch him with his fingers and taste him with his tongue. He was always very wet in heat and anything Clark did would be scored by the small slops and squashes of his slick against his skin. Exciting in its explicit vulgarity.

 

He reached behind himself for a second time and rubbed at his entrance with his first two fingers. The surge of pleasure was almost painful and left the tips of his fingers tingling and mouth dry. He repeated the motion and pressed himself against the wall as he felt his knees shake alarmingly.

 

Soon he was gasping with each stroke, hand shiny with slick, and hips bucking unwilled and urgently with the movement. At this point in time, if not sooner, Clark would either draw back to enter him or reach inside to pinch at the cluster of nerves hard enough to offer a rush of release. Bruce didn’t.

 

He was not in heat. His body didn’t beg for it. So he pushed himself.

 

He kept rubbing until it was undeniably painful. His body clenched desperately around the gaping lack inside him, his fingers chaffed against his hot irritated entrance, and his skin prickled and burnt with small sparks of agonized pleasure. He realised he was humping the wall, his cock hard and leaking against the cool tile. His tongue slipped out of his mouth of its own violation and scraped hungrily against the droplets clinging to his forearm still propped against the wall. The motion was distinctly reminiscent of an omega licking hormone filled sweat off an alpha. Of him licking Clark.

 

Not that he did that often. He tried not to. It gave the wrong impression; implied a submissive servitude that he wouldn’t conform to despite the convention of his caste.

 

He angrily pulled his tongue back into his mouth and bit the flesh on his arm instead. Bit, sucked, and chewed on his skin, heedless of the incriminating bruise he was sure to be imprinting onto his flesh.

 

He kept rubbing until his vision blurred and narrowed, breath broke into frantic ragged gulps, and knees threatened to buckle under his weight. Then, with a ragged groan of defeat, he pushed his first two fingers inside him. The added stimulation after so long was almost enough to send him over the edge. He tore his arm out from between his teeth and punched the wall.

 

He knew if Clark was doing this to him he could give him a moment to adjust. But he didn’t. Despite the agony of his senses he pushed on, unrelenting, as he crooked his fingers on his other hand - just like Clark did - to press into the yielding flesh just beyond the pucker of muscle with a firm forceful pressure; mimicking the rapid swell of an alpha’s knot.

 

Another mind altering surge of fulfilment. He groaned and began to fuck himself. Fast. Hard.

 

The way Clark would when he was only just choking back his knot.

 

He rammed his fingers into his wet hole until he was teetering right on the messy edge of orgasm, gasping at the intensity of it. His body shook, craving the promise of relief as he thrust hopelessly against the wall. With a pained grunt he pulled out and stroked his rim, near sobbing from the self abuse as he denied himself his climax.

 

But he needed this. Some small subjugated part of him needed to know he wasn’t just a hardwired sex toy for the alpha he was slowly but surely attaching himself to. He needed to know, despite the almost physical agony of stopping, that he was still in control of his body.

 

And perhaps there was an even smaller part of him, a primitive primeval part, crushed to the very back of his psyche, that craved the aggressive domination this kind of denial suggested. That wanted to be used and abused for the satisfaction of another, even if that other was only another part of him.

 

The duel desires crashed inside him in a sickening mess as he felt himself step slowly back from the brink, felt his body slowly shudder and release his pent up arousal, and the water wash away the wet between his thighs. He reservedly allowed himself some small release as he once again stroked his cock until he came. The climax he achieved was small, starved, and centred compared to the one he denied himself.

 

And suddenly that seemed silly.

 

Absurd.

 

Stupid.

 

Stupid that he would need conformation of his strength when Clark, the most powerful alpha on the planet, fell without question to his knees before him. But not matter how stupid it was... he still needed it. Needed to know he was not just an omega but a man as well.

 

He sighed and with trembling hands steadied himself against the wall as he stepped out of the shower and shuffled towards the stack of white towels waiting for him. He buried his face gratefully in the fluffy white fabric and tried to banish the sick hungry feeling swirling in his stomach.

 

It had been a good night. Despite his muddied thoughts he’d accomplished more than he had in a long time. He shouldn’t feel like this. Worn, wasted, and wanting.

 

He scrubbed the water from his hair and draped the towel across his shoulders. There was a clean pair of sweatpants and a sweatshirt in his locker and he dutifully pulled them on before trudging upstairs to construct a lopsided sandwich with some left over turkey.

 

As he finished Dick walked in, still in his Nightwing uniform, and stopped to gaze with remorse at the stripped bird bones. Bruce sighed and dutifully cut the sandwich into two halves. Dick beamed.

 

He chatted as they ate and Bruce grunted when appropriate.

 

He wasn’t a kid anymore, Bruce realised with a strange sting of remorse. There was an adult intelligence behind his words, a depth to his gaze, and strength of character that cast aside all memories of the fallow faced boy he saved - or stole - from the circus. Bruce feverishly hoped he’d done right by him. Hated that he wasn’t sure.

 

Jason either hadn’t arrived home yet or was already in bed by the time they finished. Before descending back to the cave to shower and change Dick stopped and nuzzled his cheek. It wasn’t unusual for beta pack members to reaffirm themselves with the pack leader in such a way and Bruce grudgingly accepted it.

 

“About Jason,” Dick whispered as he scraped his cheek against his. “Go easy on him.”

 

“Dick…”

 

“I know he’s been aggressive lately.”

 

Bruce hadn’t even thought about Jason. All his attention devoted to Clark.

 

“Jason’s fine,” he rumbled.

 

A deep sigh. “Thanks Bruce.”

 

They parted and he made his way up to his bedroom. When he arrived he stripped his clothes off and collapsed onto the bed with a low groan. The sheets were clean and smelt of processed flowers. He growled and rubbed his gland irritably against the pillows. It helped if only a little.

 

He thought wistfully of Clark’s scent and the enthralling way it would mix with his own when they mated. Swore as the thought brought back the same string of memories that had hounded him since Clark’s visit; trekking behind his eyes through well worn ruts.

 

Clark on his knees. Clark clumsily lowering his zipper. Clark sucking his cock.

 

Clark.

 

Square jawed, hollow cheeked, full lipped. Clark.

 

Clark who made him touch himself, who made him moan at the idea of his knot, who made him want to be an omega for the first time since... in a long time.

 

He cursed, rolled over, and deliberately buried his face in the fake floral stench of his pillow.

 

_God damn you, Clark. God damn you to hell._


	7. Chapter 7

“You’ve saved yourself, Smallville.”

 

Clark sat on the edge of the roof and munched thoughtlessly on a small square burger. His work clothes were rumbled and bundled beside him, cape bunched behind him, and legs folded to hold the rest of his takeout meal.

 

“Seriously,” Lois continued as she kicked off her shoes and sat down beside him, swinging her feet over the thirty story drop below. “Perry loved the article. _Loved it_.”

 

Clark frowned and took another bite.

 

“You don’t seem to be getting this so I’m going to put it in perspective for you. There are three things in the world Perry loves. His wife, his espresso, and your article. Are you hearing me now?”

 

He dropped the rest of his burger and, without looking up, lifted his coke to his mouth and sucked the straw.

 

“Heck, _I_ loved it. If Luthor hadn’t bribed the police this would have been a hell of a lot closer to the front page. You should feel proud of yourself.” She let her lip curl in a self satisfied smile. “Still, I think there was something to love in my…”

 

“Can you stop it?” Clark snapped.

 

She blinked, stunned at the uncharacteristic interruption. “Stop what?”

 

“Stop saying that word,” he muttered.

 

“What word?”

 

“You know the one.”

 

Lois lifted an eyebrow. “Not sure I do, Smallville. Care to enlighten me?”

 

Clark scowled and popped the straw back in his mouth, glared across the city scape stretched gold and glittering before them. He didn’t reply. Metropolis at night was a dazzling collection of lights that challenged even the star sprinkled sky above. They sat on the edge of the Daily Planet; the famous golden globe spun slowly behind them, and the domineering double L of LexCorp tower stood before them with all the misplaced righteousness as the super villain himself.

 

After a while Lois huffed a sigh and swung her legs idly over the precise below. “You know, I really would love to know what all this has been about.”

 

“That word,” Clark hissed. “And nothing.” Frowned. “It was nothing.”

 

“What word?” She said, exasperated. “And, for the love of God, what…”

 

“ _That_ word!”

 

Lois paused. “Love?”

 

Clark blushed and looked away. “Yes.”

 

“Seriously? Love?”

 

“Can you please stop using it? Please?”

 

“What on Earth have you got against love?”

 

“Nothing! I don’t…” he tossed the straw and cap off his drink and dipped the rest into his mouth. When he next spoke it was around waning cubes of ice. “Can you please just… it was nothing. I’m sorry I spoke.”

 

“Okay, fine,” she held up her hands, “I won’t say it again.” Slid her tongue along the blunt edge of her teeth. “But that’s an awfully incriminating word to be shy of, Clark. What’s the story?”

 

He shot her a dark look.

 

“Hey, don’t judge. I’m a reporter. It is literally my business to be nosy.”

 

“I know I…” he sighed and dropped the drained soda cup onto the ledge beside him. “I’m sorry. It’s nothing. Really.”

 

“So you keep saying.” She studied him for a moment. “You know, Clark, it’s a long time since we were dating. I don’t mind if you’re seeing someone else. Heck, it would probably make Jonathan happy to know I don’t have a single alpha sitting across from me every day at work. Not that he’s alphaphobic or anything but… you know.”

 

Clark’s cheeks coloured. “Jonathan Carroll? You’re dating him again?”

 

She shrugged. “I never thought I would end up in a boring old beta on beta relationship but hey, someone’s got to conform to the statistic.”

 

“I suppose.”

 

When it became clear he wasn’t going to say anything else she spoke. “I’m just going to take a wild stab in the dark here and guess you’ve fallen in love with this omega you’ve been helping.”

 

A telling twitch.

 

“Hey, there is a reason I’m in this business,” she said with a grin. “I’m good at guessing where the story is.” She drummed her finger on the stone beneath her. “And honestly, after that article, anyone could guess you’ve been on the bite.”

 

“I never bite.”

 

“Really?”

 

He nodded.

 

“Not even just little bites?”

 

“No.”

 

“Oh boy.”

 

A grim smile. “Tell me about it.”

 

It wasn’t abnormal for alphas and omegas to mate and not bond. Mating was nothing too special. It was just sex during a heat. Omegas often sought relief with friends and strangers when they were without a partner. Biting was another story. To bite the neck of an omega was an aggressive declaration of intent – or ownership – that was traditionally reserved for committed couples. As such alphas were expected to withhold their bite during casual encounters. But Clark had been mating this faceless omega for over half a year now, if his scent was anything to go by. Most alpha omega couples tended to start nipping some time in the third month.

 

Unless they were fundamentally religious, of course, then the first bite would be on the alter.

 

A bond was a mutual addiction forged between alpha and omega. While she understood anyone being reluctant to subjugate themselves to the indignity of being dependant on another person in that way, a bond wasn’t initially strong, nor was it irreversible. In the first few months a few weeks apart and a small bout of withdrawal was all it took to break a bond.

 

She’d seen it happen enough in high school.

 

If an omega wasn’t willing to have their alpha bite them after so long, wasn’t even willing to entertain a weak bond, it suggested they didn’t want the alpha for anything more than relief from their heats. Saw him as nothing more than a cock and knot.

 

And Clark was in love with them.

 

It was a brutal situation for anyone to be in. Also a vulnerable one.

 

“Oh boy,” she said again, softly. “This omega of yours isn’t taking any money, are they?”

 

Clark shook his head.

 

“Okay… okay just in case they’ve guilt tripped you into thinking no other alpha could take care of…”

 

“Lois,” he stopped her. “It’s not like that.”

 

“Are you sure?” She pressed. “I know it’s not trendy to talk about this but omegas can be abusive partners too. If not physically or financially then perhaps emotionally?”

 

“No. It’s… it’s my fault.”

 

“I hate to break it to you but that is what a lot of victims of this kind of thing say.”

 

“It was only meant to be about need,” Clark said. “We agreed.”

 

 “Oh,” she relaxed a little.

 

Clark grabbed the now empty paper boxes and wraps off his lap and onto the ledge beside him. “I… I don’t want to talk about it.” He rasped. “Not yet.”

 

“Fair enough,” she agreed softly.

 

A moment of silence.

 

In the distance she could hear a helicopter. She had first seen Superman from the seat of a helicopter. He’d saved her with a lopsided grin as he plucked the distressed vehicle out of the sky before it crashed into the glittering body of the city bank. He’d seemed so absurd hovering off the ground, decked out in royal blue and blazing red, she’d almost laughed.

 

Years ago. It was only a few years ago. But, in that moment it felt like a lifetime.

 

“As I was saying,” she began.

 

Clark shot her a pained look.

 

“Your article,” she reassured him. “It’s seriously riveting. Keep writing like that and you’ll get noticed.”

 

“I didn’t mean to get noticed.”

 

“No. You meant to save your arse.”

 

“No,” he shook his head. “I was going to let myself get fired.”

 

She blinked. “Seriously? What the hell put your head back on straight?”

 

“I found a story I wanted to write,” he muttered.

 

She didn’t have an answer for that.

 

He was too despondent it was almost heart wrenching.

 

“I…” she frowned. “It’ll be alright, Clark. It will be.”

 

“I know.”

 

She stared down at the city below. “It really was a very good article.”

 

Clark vanished in a blur of movement as he dressed in his work clothes. Resumed his spot beside her.

 

“Wh-?”

 

The door burst open and Jimmy walked onto the roof with a board grin and two pizza boxes balanced on the palm of his hand.

 

“There you guys are! I knew I’d find you up here. It’s Thursday! Feels so good doesn’t it? Friday’s edition is done, my photo is on the front, and Clark isn’t fired. Oh, and Godfather and Meatlovers. So good. Man, I _love_ nights like this.”

 

Lois flinched.

 

Clark swallowed and raked his fingers through his hair. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s great.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this chapter isn't the best. I'm trying to keep the scales even on this one (half the chapters Clark and pals and half Bruce and birds) and it does have a point... I promise. But hey, best friend Lois is never a bad thing right?


	8. Chapter 8

“You know,” Dick said as he pulled the tightrope’s clasp tight around a chipped stalagmite. “Everyone thinks betas can’t smell scents. Or at least, not smell them well enough to properly distinguish between them.” He ran, jumped, and grabbed hold of the tightrope. He used the momentum of the movement to swing expertly onto the line, and stood, balanced just over three metres off the cave floor. “Why is that do you think?”

 

Bruce sat at the computer and filtered through an obscene amount of incoming news reports, surveillance footage, and what looked to be a detailed record of yesterday’s stock market.

 

Dick didn’t expect him to answer.

 

As usual his expectation was correct.

 

“I mean, seriously,” he rolled a slow cartwheel, “it’s ridiculous. We’re not a different species; we still have the sex hormones, abject not as strong. Why wouldn’t we be able to smell it on other people?”

 

Bruce drummed his fingers into the keyboard and began scrolling through a page of text. Grunted in irritation when he didn’t find what he was looking for and quickly typed in a couple of key words.

 

“I can smell you from here,” Dick continued. “Sweet and heavy. Omega. Clear as day. Now, I know I can’t read scents like you and Jason can, and I sure as hell can’t track them the way you do, but I can _smell_ them.”

 

Bruce found what he was looking for, set a couple of scans going, and began to read.

 

“But for some reason people always introduce themselves with their caste. Hi my name is Joe and I’m an alpha. This is my wife Jane and she’s a beta. Here are our children John and Jessie, they’re omegas.” He back flipped and landed with his arms out stretched on the gently bouncing cord. “I mean, seriously. What do they think this thing on the front of my face is for? Good looks?”

 

A few of the scans finished and popped up with a number of documents stamped with the Justice League header. He ignored them, back turned towards Dick. Attention now fixed on a half page of text displayed before him.

 

“I wouldn’t mind so much but, you know, betas are still the majority of the population.” He strode confidently along the length of the cable and raked his fingers through his hair. “I mean, come on, how unobservant do you have to be? Betas are _everywhere_ and we can all smell.”

 

Bruce didn’t move, didn’t utter a single sound, fixated on his reading.

 

“But, I guess, no one pays attention to betas,” he said. “We’re just ignored. The boring betas at the back of the bunch. And again, I wouldn’t mind so much it’s just… just sometimes I…”

 

He trailed off as Bruce stood up and strode out of the cave, face masked behind stiff pale features, and eyes dark with private animosity.

 

“… sometimes I feel I’m completely invisible,” Dick finished as the man disappeared up the stairs into the manor.

 

He sighed and slumped down to sit on the tightrope, routine abandoned. It was a stupid exercise anyway. He didn’t need to maintain a precise knowledge of how to mauver in such a fashion on a line. As long as he could grabble to one, run across one, and swing from one he could work along side Bruce. Everything else, in this line of work, was redundant. Tumbles, twists, and twirls were suitable for the circus not the streets.

 

Suitable only for performance, applause, and attention in the centre of the ring…

 

God, but sometimes he missed the circus.

 

It was different in the circus. In the circus it didn’t matter what someone was when they stepped into the spotlight. Sex, gender, caste… none of it mattered. All that mattered was what you could do. And he… he could fly.

 

Dick pushed himself to his feet and forced himself to run through a routine. Jumped, spun, and landed. Jumped, spun, and landed. Over and over again. Practising for a show that would never be performed.

 

Sometimes Dick hated being a beta.

 

He’d heard all the arguments for his pallid caste. A beta was versatile. A beta was dependable. Employers prefer betas. Betas are more likely to report happy relationships. Betas have the longest average lifespan. Statically it was better to be a beta than any other caste.

 

But betas were also boring.

 

All attention fell off them the second an alpha or omega entered the room.

 

He would give anything, _anything_ , to have someone look at him the way Clark looked at Bruce; with a hopeless captivated yearning. Or the way Bruce would blatantly look back; eyes alive with sheer, unguarded, fascination.

 

Sometimes, lingering forgotten at the back of one of Wayne Enterprises social functions, heats seemed like such a small price to pay.

 

It was selfish.

 

He knew it.

 

Knew he should be above such childish jealousy. Most of the time he was.

 

But despite himself, in some small way, he wanted to be noticed. To be more than just a link in the chain, a support to hold up the more turbulent pack members. Because that was a beta’s role in a pack; they were the foundation, the filler. They were never at the fore.

 

Most of the time he didn’t mind.

 

He even enjoyed the liberties such a position held.

 

But sometimes it hurt.

 

It hurt most with Jason.

 

Because most of all he wanted Jason to pay attention to him the way he would to Bruce; his face tormented, angry, but also undeniably _utterly_ enthralled. If Bruce was nearby Jason’s gaze could be anywhere – his hands, the wall, even Dick – but his attention was riveted onto Bruce. The one place he never seemed to look.

 

He finished half an hour later, slipped warily from the rope, and kicked off his shoes to pad upstairs.

 

As usual Alfred had prepped a protein packed lunch now sitting cooling on the kitchen table. The rich tantalizing smell of the food was enough to draw the wayward family members from almost any crevice of the cave. Alfred watched fondly as they assembled.

  
  
Alfred was a mid level beta, the surest and safest member of any pack, and fell into a unique position within their rag tag team. He'd obviously long ago imprinted a basic parent bond onto Bruce and thus, despite being officially only an employee, was without fanfare accepted as the pack's only elder.

  
  
It afforded him liberties with Bruce that were denied to Dick or Jason.

  
  
Dick watched as he rechecked the stitches on a cut in Bruce's arm with a critical eye, scolded the dark eyed omega, and quickly corrected the lay of his shirt. Bruce shook him off with a low growl. Alfred rebuffed the rumble with a coolly unimpressed look.

  
  
It was their usual ritual. Comforting in a way. Safe.

  
  
Dick smiled at the butler and thanked him for the food.

  
  
Bruce reached for one of the small meat pies still cooling on a baking tray. Jason took it first.

  
  
It was a small affront, small enough to be a mistake, and easily dismissed. After all the sharp insults and tests Jason had been bombarding Bruce with Dick was almost grateful for the lighter stroke of disobedience. Stealing small pieces of food from the pack leader was more the behaviour of a cheeky pup than a rival.

  
  
He was not expecting the reaction.

  
  
Without preamble, without even a growl in warning, Bruce struck.

  
  
His knuckle met the other man's jaw and knocked him against the wall with enough force to send the picture on the wall clattering to the floor.

  
  
"Bruce!" Dick cried. "You promised!"

  
  
Jason's hand lifted to cup his chin and cheek even as a red line of blood trickled between his lips. His eyes flashed back to Bruce, the blue blistering and baneful. His lips jerked back in an unguarded snarl.

  
  
"You fucking bitch."

  
  
Bruce's face twisted and he stepped forward.

  
  
"No no no," Dick ducked between them. "Come on, guys! What the hell are you doing?"

  
  
"Get out of my way," Bruce growled.

  
  
God, but it was hard not to obey when he sounded like that; when he spoke with the pitch, tone, and authority of a angry alpha.

  
  
"Just..." Dick planted his feet and squared his shoulders. "We don't need to do this, okay?"

  
  
Bruce's eyes burnt into him. The stark pale blue undercut with raw enmity bubbling up from him like bile; sick, wrong, and wretched. He was angry, far more so than Jason's minor misdemeanour warranted. But that anger wasn't his usual low burning flame. It was a putrid froth, a pain. An unexplainable hurt mixed thick with his anger, fuelling it.

  
  
"Bruce?"

  
  
"Get the hell out of my way!"

  
  
"I... Bruce you can't just... you can't just punish him like this."

  
  
He barked with cold, angry, laughter. "Why the hell wouldn't I be able to do that?" Arms thrown wide in mock bewilderment. "Why Dick? Why on Earth would I be fucking incapable of behaving like a leader? What could it possibly be that makes me unable to punish him, that gives him the idea that it's okay to behave like this?"

  
  
"Bruce, I don't know what the hell has gotten into you but..."

  
  
"What could possibly make a little mutt alpha struggle to respect me?"

  
  
"Master Bruce," Alfred said, sure and stern. "Not here. Not now."

  
  
Bruce glared at the older man.

  
  
"Not over this."

  
  
"This isn't..." Bruce began, caught himself. A moment of silence; stretched and stained. Bruce glared once more at Jason, glaring at him from over Dick's shoulder, and without another word marched out of the room.

  
  
Dick listened to the sound of his footsteps as he disappeared into the depths of the house.

  
  
"Huh," Jason wiped his lip on his sleeve. "That time of the month I guess."

  
  
"Don't you fucking start," Dick snapped at the other man. "Don't you fucking dare."

  
  
Jason looked up at him in unmasked shock at the accusatory tone coming from his usually passive partner in crime.

  
  
"What?"

  
  
"Why the hell did you have to do that?"

  
  
"It was just a..."

  
  
"You called him a _bitch_ , Jason."

  
  
"He is..."

  
  
"He's our leader!"

  
  
Low. "He's an omega."

  
  
"Yes," Dick snapped. "He's an omega. He's also brilliant. Just because you can't see anything beyond the smell of his neck doesn't mean he's not fit to lead _his_ pack. Just because you can't let go of your rutting instincts doesn't mean he's a bitch!"

  
  
"Everyone is governed by our instincts," Jason growled. "Everyone. That why he bends over for his alien freak. Why he's so emotionally fucked."

  
  
"God, I want to kill you sometimes."

  
  
Eyes flashed. " _And_ it's why you two prance around in such a pathetic panic; desperately trying to mend everything, to seal the rift, to bring the pack together." He shoved Dick aside and resolutely picked up the forgotten pie. "Instinct is me fighting, and him fucking. Instinct is you trying to hold together this messed up pack. To fill the gap. To try and be the bitch for the unattached alpha just to keep me down."

  
  
Dick felt the colour drain from his face. "That's not... I..."

  
  
"Next time keep your head down and let us sort out our bloody business, beta."

  
  
He left. The door slammed closed behind him as abrupt and final as a full stop stamped remorselessly at the end of a sentence.

  
  
"He's a high level alpha, Master Richard," the old butler said softly. "At the crest of his own cycle if I am not mistaken."

  
  
"I know..." he whispered, trying to hide the irrational tears that threatened behind his eyes.

  
  
"No doubt he is feeling victimized," Alfred continued. "To be the only alpha in the pack and yet rebuffed brutally by the only omega. He resorts to these petulant and petty acts to try and prove his presence and his place not to hurt you."

  
  
Dick nodded.

  
  
"He doesn't mean what he says."

  
  
"I just wish..." he croaked.

  
  
"Sometimes it's hard," Alfred conceded gently. "To be a bond-less beta. To be boring."

  
  
Dick looked up in shock.

  
  
The older man smiled knowingly. "Trust me, young master, at the end of the day, betas come out on top. He's obsessed with Bruce's wrapping paper, his scent, not the man himself. He'll realise he was wrong."

  
  
"I don't..."

  
  
"Some of the best gifts come wrapped in newspaper."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I am SO sorry this took so long to get out there. I have had the most extraordinary string of occupying events lately. And I'm not just saying that. I've moved house (twice), burnt out and rebuilt my laptop, and have a few surprising family events pop up out of nowhere (this holiday season is an annual thing, who knew?).
> 
> This as a result was written in little bits and pieces on a number of different computers and programs and... well... it's a bit of a Frankenstein.
> 
> I hope you like it regardless!


	9. Chapter 9

Bruce yanked open the stainless steel draws and began clawing though the contents. A collection of tightly rolled bandages, some medical gauze, and string still threaded and ready to be stitched was all that greeted him in the first compartment. In the second he found sterilized surgical supplies complete with scalpel and gloves. By the time he found the small vials of painkillers and other medication his breathing was ragged and his fingers shaking.

 

The events of the morning flashed behind his eyes, each detail strangely, brutally, ordinary as the stability he had fought for fractured and failed around him. As the support he thought he had was snatched from under his feet.

 

He roughly shoved aside armloads of antitoxins and varies antidotes as he dug through the cabinet. A few tumbled over the metal lip and fell down to smash on the sterilized floor. He jerked back as if he’d been stung.

 

“Master Bruce?”

 

He looked up at the man standing in the doorway. He was in the medical wing of the Batcave, kneeling before the set of draws in the far corner, and breathing in shallow, frantic, gasps.

 

“Do you require my assistance?”

 

“Alpha shots,” he rasped.

 

Alfred frowned. “Sir?”

 

“Where are the alpha hormone shots?”

 

His hands were shaking and he gripped the edge of the draw gaping open in front of him to hide it as the sickening mix of rage, betrayal, and hurt continued to wash through him. He’d been betrayed before. He’d… he should have known he could never trust an alpha again. Not ever again. Not even Clark. Clark who had been so good, so kind, so safe…

 

He thought of sparkling blue eyes and felt his resolve stutter.

 

He was over reacting. He had to give the man the benefit of the doubt. They… that was just his hormones talking. The bond addiction in him desperately trying to reshape the facts to paint the man innocent in this whole affair. As if he wasn’t the root of the problem.

 

Alfred knelt down at his side and carefully plucked the small vial of mixed hormones from the back of the cabinet. “If I may be so bold, sir, it is not advisable to subjugate your body to these without due cause.”

 

“I need it,” he snarled.

 

The butler frowned and he reached forward to quickly check Bruce’s temperature on the back of his hand. “You haven’t had an anxiety attack since you were a boy,” the man said simply. “What happened?”

 

Alpha shots were often given to calm down panicking omegas.

 

“I’m not having an anxiety attack,” Bruce snapped and snatched the bottle from the other man.

 

Alfred watched with a critical eye as he selected a needle, drew a healthy dose of the substance into the syringe, and wrestled his sleeve up.

 

“If this is about what happened with young master Jason I would recommend calling Mr Kent if you need…”

 

“I don’t need him!”

 

Understanding flashed vivid in Alfred’s eyes. “Ah.”

 

Bruce moved to push the needle into his vein but was stopped as Alfred calmly put his hand over the crook in his elbow.

 

“You and Mr Kent have had a fight.”

 

It wasn’t a question but Bruce answered it anyway. “No,” he growled.

 

“He has done something that offends you then,” the man concluded.

 

“ _He_ isn’t relevant.”

 

“Then why are you trying to break your bond with him?”

 

Alpha hormone shots were, due to the addictive properties of singular sex hormones, mixed. If a bonded omega’s alpha was absent a persistent dosage of alpha shots would lessen the bond starvation and withdrawal as well as speed up the breaking of their bond. Bruce wasn’t bonded but the basic addiction his body was harbouring to Clark would be destroyed after a week or two of daily alpha shots.

 

Bonds required continual exposure to _one_ alpha’s hormones. The cocktail was the key.

 

“I don’t have a bond with him,” Bruce snarled.

 

“Perhaps not, sir, but you do have _something_ with him.”

 

“I don’t have anything with him.”

 

Alfred didn’t bother to challenge this statement. “It may not be my place, master Bruce, but that man has been one of the greatest allies you could ever ask for. Whatever it is he has done…”

 

Bruce felt something inside him lurch and he gripped the needle tighter. “He’s an alpha,” he heard himself hiss. “Alphas are not good for me.”

 

“You know that isn’t true,” the butler chided him softly.

 

Bruce thought of Clark, smiling and open, but secretly harbouring traitorous thoughts. He thought of Jason snapping at his ankles every waking moment; looking to dislodge his place within his own pack out of instinct alone. He thought of Lex Luthor bitterly refusing to do business with the company that bore the namesake of an unbound omega. He thought of the alphas packed shoulder to shoulder around him at parties. He thought of Bane’s anger upon discovering what he had damaged, Talia’s biting betrayal, and his parents…

 

They were both alphas. They weren’t fighting back but that didn’t matter. Alphas were dangerous; they needed to be put down. If they weren’t alphas…

 

Alfred seemed to read some change on his face. “Master Bruce?”

 

It had been the night he’d learnt he was an omega. His fear had brought on a prepubescent sting of pheromones strong enough to wash across the bloody pearl strewn ally and stay the bullet locked and loaded for him.

 

Alphas were dangerous. Betas too could cause trouble if driven too. But omegas… they were fragile creatures incapable of acting out. ‘I ain’t no good guy,’ Chill had said, years later when he tracked him down, ‘but I ain’t no monster neither. The kid was an omega. You got to be fucked up to kill an omega.’

 

Protect the breeders. Keep them safe. And subservant.

 

He thought Clark was different…

 

“Master Bruce,” Alfred said more firmly and gripped his arm. “Whatever has happened between you and Mr. Kent I doubt very much this is the appropriate response.”

 

Bruce licked his lips. Found them parched and dry. “You don’t know…”

 

“No,” the man agreed, “I don’t. So before you start destroying the one good relationship you’ve had in years, let’s sit down and talk about it.”

 

“No.”

 

“I know Mr Kent,” Alfred persisted. “Perhaps not as well as I should but I know him all the same. Whatever disagreement you two have had I am sure can be remedied.”

 

“No,” he growled.

 

“Quite frankly,” Alfred pulled the syringe form his hand, “I couldn’t conceive an alpha more willing to run the ridiculous endless obstacle course to stay in your affections than that man.” He put the needle down. “Nor, it should be noted, have you ever once returned bitten from his care despite the months you two have been exclusively mating. He is allowing you to develop a preliminary bond while starving off one himself to keep you happy.”

 

Bruce glared at him.

 

“He cares about you a great deal, sir. I highly doubt whatever has happened between you is as serious as you believe.”

 

“Don’t,” he yanked his arm out of the other man’s hands. “Don’t try to pacify me.”

 

Eyebrow cocked. “So it is you who has found issue with your relationship, not he?” There wasn’t a hint of surprise in the statement.

 

Bruce snorted. “He isn’t worth it.”

 

“Why is that, sir?”

 

“He was just pretending! He doesn’t think about me any differently from… he doesn’t think I’m… he’s the same as the others. Just another fucking alpha.”

 

Alfred regarded him with a critical eye. “What did he say?”

 

“Nothing,” he spat. “He didn’t say anything at all.”

 

“But he _did_ something, something this morning, something that upset you enough to lash out disproportionately at Jason. Something that somehow gives you insight into how he thinks?”

 

Bruce turned away from him.

 

Alfred was reading him too easily, deducing the facts too fast. His walls were down, his masks off, and that… he couldn’t allow that. He needed to find his centre, find his purpose, and rationally attack this new problem without exposing himself.

 

God, but this was so much harder than it should be. Hurt so much more. Because Clark… was so much more important than he ever anticipated, ever planned for. So much more…

 

No.

 

This was just another possessive alpha trying to trick him into a bond. Just another alpha who thought of him as nothing more than a prized possession waiting to be claimed and cared for.

 

He’d thought Clark was different. He thought Clark respected him. He was wrong. If Clark truly respected who he was, what he was, he wouldn’t have written what he did. If Clark was the man he’d thought he was he would never have published that article.

 

If Clark… Clark… God, it was _Clark_. And he was… just another alpha.

 

Without looking back he left the sterilised medical wing and returned to the main body of the cave. He strode back towards the idle computer, back to where he had discovered Clark’s article that morning as Dick chatted behind him, and tried to ignore the terrified twist of his heart at the idea of never mating with Clark again. He was the host of a basic addiction and without Clark he would succumb to a brief withdrawal. But, beyond that, he had come to rely and depend - to _lean_ \- on Clark in ways he never had another alpha.

 

He’d trusted Clark, believed in him, loved him… It was a feeling he’d been harbouring, hidden, for a long time, he realised. A feeling he had denied, had written off as a by-product of his as yet fragile addiction. A feeling now turned black with betrayal.

 

Bruce swallowed the bitter tirade of emotions and sat down at the computer. He could feel Alfred’s eyes on the back of his neck and furiously tapped the keyboard to bring up the work he abandoned that morning. The article flashed for a brief moment, emblazed with the tell tale logo of the Daily Planet, before he closed it and furiously tried to focus on a money laundering and drug trafficking operation he’d been in the process of taking apart.

 

Stock market reports, forged cheques, false business ledgers, store footage, an account of bribes paid, incriminating phone calls, text messages, confessions, marked bills, maps of underground tunnels, substance variations, known dealers, criminal relations…

 

He didn’t see any of it.

 

He couldn’t concentrate over the inexplicable ache in his chest and the nagging voice in the back of his head that insisted there must be some explanation as to why Clark wrote what he did.

 

There must be a reason why there was a whole article in Clark proud poetic voice firmly detailing the need to protect and control the lesser caste.

 

He must… care more than that.

 

After everything they had been through he must be more than a free fuck to Clark. He must be…

 

He buried his face in his hands.

 

“Master Bruce.”

 

“Not now, Alfred,” he horsed.

 

“Of course, sir,” the man said gently, “but might I be able to make one humble suggestion.”

 

Bruce looked up with a frown and the butler put a phone into his hand. The screen displayed the familiar number already dialled and waiting for his request to ring.

 

“You’re such a beta,” Bruce rumbled.

 

A curl of lip. “Indeed sir.”

 

He thought of Dick standing between him and Jason and not for the first time that day he was silently grateful for the beta’s instinct of pack preservation. In the most animalistic sense a traditional pack was made up of the alpha hunters, the omega breeders, and the betas who were the diplomats; the  _glue_  that held everything together and kept the pack functioning and happy. Their small family was hardly enough to quantify as a pack and strayed so far from tradition the more conservative churches wouldn't allow them through their doors. But in some aspects nothing had changed.

 

“This won’t work,” he grunted as he hit the call button. “I can’t… he can’t fix this.”

 

“I am not so sure, sir.”

 

Clark picked up on the second ring.


	10. Chapter 10

“What do you want, Clark?”

 

“I… I can’t afford…”

 

Bruce’s eyes were dark, angry. “What do you want?” He repeated slowly.

 

“N-nothing,” Clark closed the menu with shaking fingers. “Nothing.”

 

“That’s a lie.” His words clipped and callous.

 

“I’m not hungry,” he insisted nervously.

 

“That’s not,” Bruce growled, “what I asked.”

 

They were tucked in the back of a prestigious restaurant which was clearly keeping its doors open just for the patronage of Gotham’s wayward prince. Around them the other tables were wiped and half sat under a crown of upturned chairs. In the kitchen the remaining staff were quietly bickering over the ridiculous bribe Bruce had pushed into the palm of the previously apologetic manager.

 

“Bruce I… I don’t understand,” Clark said desperately. “I thought… when you asked me here I thought…”

 

“What, Clark?” Bruce hissed, the use of his name somehow condescending. “What did you think?”

 

The false fantasy that had flared to life after the late night invitation gutted like a flame in the wind.

 

Clark swallowed and pushed his glasses further up his nose. “What was I meant to think?” He asked meekly.

 

He didn’t know what he’d done wrong; he didn’t know why Bruce was so angry, or why he’d been told to come to the restaurant in the middle of the night. He didn’t know how to defuse the situation, or what lay behind the biting tone and bleak animosity in the other man’s eyes. The only thing he knew was Bruce wasn’t staying long. He had spotted a small Batcave hidden under the building as he flew down and guessed at the man’s avenue of escape that evening.

 

“Nothing at all,” Bruce rumbled and irritably waved over the waiter who was trying to look busy standing in the far corner of the room. He scuttled over and scooped up their menus as Bruce flippantly ordered a bottle of wine and two meals of a name Clark couldn’t even pronounce.

 

The man practically kowtowed his way away from their table.

 

Bruce’s eyes never left Clark. Chilling, condemning, and cruel.

 

“You still haven’t answered my question.”

 

“I don’t…”

 

“What do you want?” Bruce said again.

 

“Bruce, please,” Clark put his hands, palm up, on the table before him. “I don’t know what you want me tell you.”

 

“The truth,” he answered.

 

Clark felt like he was grasping at straws. There was irritation on Bruce’s face, undeniable anger, and perhaps even a trickle of accusation. None of it helped discern the words that would make this, whatever this was, go away.

 

“I…” Clark raked his fingers through his hair. “What truth?”

 

“God damn you, Clark!”

 

“Please.”

 

Bruce looked away and looked back. “What,” he began slowly as if just barely stopping himself from shouting, “do you want?”

 

“This isn’t fair, Bruce,” Clark told him. “What do you mean?”

 

“From me.”

 

He felt the colour flood from his face. “W-what?”

 

“What do you want from me?”

 

“Nothing,” he horsed. “Nothing I…”

 

“You said that before,” Bruce reminded him. “It’s a lie.”

 

The waiter returned, seemed to sense the tension at the table, and with a nervous motion presented the selected bottle and filled two glasses with the blonde alcohol. Once done he left the bottle on the table and fled. Clark wished he could go with him.

 

Bruce picked up his glass, swirled it, and put it back down, untouched. His eyes never left Clark.

 

“I…” Clark swallowed. Bruce knew. He knew. “I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he said hopelessly.

 

Bruce’s eyes flashed. “What did you mean to do?”

 

“Nothing,” he answered honestly. “I just…” He knew. Clark couldn’t guess how, but somehow Bruce knew he loved him. He must. What else could possibly make Bruce react this way? “I was never going to… to ask for anything.”

 

Hurt flashed across Bruce’s features, slipped from behind his mask, and then was covered again. “So you admit it.”

 

Clark stared at him, stunned for a moment. “Bruce?”

 

“You admit it?!” He hissed.

 

“I…” he licked his lips. “Yes.”

 

Bruce glared down at his wine, picked it up again, and this time did swallow a messy mouthful. Wiped the corner of his mouth with his sleeve, headless of the expensive fabric.

 

“So,” he said coldly. “What was the plan?”

 

“No plan,” Clark promised.

 

“Don’t try to tell me you were acting on instinct,” Bruce spat. “If this was that simple you would have bitten me by now.” He jabbed an accusing finger towards him. “You were trying to get me addicted and then, bit by bit, you would change the rules.”

 

Clark looked down at his hands. “You make the rules, Bruce. You always made the rules.”

 

“Little by little you would get me down on my knees.”

 

Clark almost blanched. “No I… I would never! That isn’t what this is about, Bruce! That was never…”

 

“Omegas need to be guided, protected, kept safe in a neat little cage.”

 

Clark blinked. “What? I… you know that’s not…”

 

“All I know is what you told the rest of the fucking world.”

 

Clark stared at him as he felt his resolve slip. “What are you talking about?”

 

“Don’t play dumb with me,” Bruce snapped. “You’ve already…”

 

“I would _never_ hurt you.” The words tumbled out of him like water spilling over the lip of a dam. “I care about you, Bruce.”

 

Bruce stiffened. “No,” he rasped. “No, that’s a lie. If you cared you wouldn’t have done this.”

 

Clark focused on the other man, the gravity of his confession temporarily lost in the mystery of their purpose here. “Done what?” He asked. “What… Bruce, what the hell is this about?”

 

Bruce glared at him. “You know what this is about.”

 

“No,” Clark corrected him, “I don’t! I… I thought… I’ve been… I care about you and that’s…”

 

“You don’t.”

 

“I do, Bruce. I do. I would never hurt you and it doesn’t even matter because you’re sitting across from me acting like I’ve murdered someone and I…”

 

“Your article.”

 

Clark frowned. “My article? What…” Understanding struck. “Oh no. No no no no. You don’t understand. That wasn’t you I was talking about.”

 

“Fuck you.”

 

“I’m not lying,” Clark said, clapping his hands together beseechingly before him. “It wasn’t you. I swear.”

 

“Why should I believe you,” he spat. “You _asked_ me about nesting. You said it was for an article.”

 

“I lied,” Clark said. “It wasn’t for an article. There was this fire in Chicago.”

 

“I heard.”

 

“It was caused by a woman nesting. I was worried you… I was…”

 

A different kind of look passed behind Bruce’s eyes. “You have another omega,” he concluded bitterly.

 

“No!” Clark raked his hands through his hair. “God, Bruce, I… it was this fire. It messed me up a ton. And I was already on the edge. I needed an article. I needed one. So I wrote about making nests safer.”

 

“You wrote about omegas _needing_ alphas.”

 

“I… I didn’t mean it to sound… I only had five hundred words and…”

 

“Write a different article!”

 

“I couldn’t! I…” Clark balled his hands into fists. “I don’t expect you to understand this but I was on the verge of getting fired,” he finally retorted sharply.

 

The anger in Bruce’s eyes seemed to slacken as he blinked in shock. “What?”

 

Clark stole a quiet moment of bitter satisfaction as being able to invoke that look from the critical analysing Batman. The moment stretched as the waiter returned with the twin meals and settled them nervously on the table in front of them. The porcelain plates were huge and the tiny portions artfully presented.

 

When he retreated Bruce looked down, frowned, and looked back up. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

 

“Yeah,” Clark crossed his arms. “Like I’m going to tell my fuck buddy everything he manages to mess up in my life when he tells me to drop everything and spend four days locked in a cave with him.”

 

Bruce didn’t say anything and Clark felt his own wave of anger wash in as if to replace the departing wrath of the other man.

 

“You never tell me anything, Bruce,” he ploughed on. “Why the hell should I tell you what’s going on with my life?” He grabbed the fork and roughly removed a segment of whatever food this was, and shoved it into his mouth. Swallowed without tasting.

 

“You used to tell me things,” Bruce muttered.

 

Clark snorted. “As if you listened. Hell, you would rather just read my articles than give me any scrap of bloody attention now.”

 

“I’ve always read your articles,” Bruce countered with a low growl. “And I pay more attention to you than I do _anyone_.” Steel eyes focused on him, dark with accusation. “God damn it, Clark, if my heats were getting in the way why didn’t you tell me?”

 

Clark frowned down at his food.

 

“If you were getting in trouble as work I could of…”

 

“No,” Clark growled. “No. I may be your plaything alpha but I can still handle my own job.”

 

“My plaything alpha?” Bruce said in disbelief. “ _You_ think you’re _my_ … After what you wrote about omegas?”

 

Clark stared at him. “I told you that wasn’t you!”

 

“You said alphas needed to control omegas,” Bruce hissed.

 

“I said omegas shouldn’t nest alone,” he corrected him sharply.

 

“I nest just fine alone,” Bruce rumbled.

 

“Yes! Because the article _wasn’t about you_!”

 

“I’m not special,” the other man insisted and began attacking his food with knife and fork. Destroying it with savagery and yet not eating a single bite. “I’m the same as all those other omegas.”

 

Clark snorted. “Not special my arse.”

 

Bruce glared at him.

 

“Okay,” Clark threw down his fork. “I’m sorry. I wrote a story on alphas and omegas _being there_ for each other and I’m sorry. I should have known you would get your cape in a twist. I should have known you would read things into it that weren’t there. I should have known you would attack me with this alpha hating bullshit.”

 

Something seemed to occur to Bruce and he blinked down at the mashed mess on his plate as if surprised to see the damage he had caused.

 

“I’m sorry I’m not a God damned mind reader,” Clark ploughed on, uncaring, “I know you’ve had a shit string of experiences when it comes to alphas but, guess what, we’re not all out there to try and bond with you. We’re not all trying to turn you into our hormonally wired sex slave.” He snorted in disgust. “As if that would change you. You’re more alpha than any alpha I’ve ever met! You could have a billion bloody bonds and you’d probably still…”

 

“I’m not,” Bruce shook his head. “I’m not an alpha.”

 

“You know what I mean,” Clark growled.

 

“Yes,” Bruce snapped. “I do. But I’m not. I’m an omega, a high level omega. And with Jason acting the way he is and now you’re…”

 

“What?” he barked. “What the hell have I done now?”

 

“That!” Bruce jabbed a finger towards him. “You would never growl around any other omega. But you don’t think of me like an omega. I’m an alpha to you. Or, at least, an omega who is strong. I have fought so fucking hard to make people see me like that and they still… but with you it’s different. You respected me without question and then you wrote that article and I…”

 

Clark stared at him unsure if this speech was leading to another accusation or an apology.

 

It was neither.

 

Bruce chewed his bottom lip in obvious reluctance before looking back and pinning him effortlessly under his intense pale glare. Despite his anger, despite the rolling wreck this conversation had turned into, Clark felt captured by that look. Despite the hurt of the other man’s words, he was as helpless under his scrutiny as he ever was; prey held enthralled by the simple, deadly, beauty of a slowly approaching predator.

 

“You’re the only person I know who treats me the same after learning my caste,” Bruce said softly, slowly, as if intimately aware how extensively he had stolen Clark’s attention. “You’re the only one that has stuck by me. You’re strong but safe and I could… I trust you, Clark. I trust you, I lean on you, I love you, and I do it all without even thinking about it.”

 

Clark felt the bottom fall out of his world. He felt gutted, hollow, and yet as he gaped at the other man that emptiness began to well and feel with a fierce fluttering hope.

 

“Bruce?”

 

“It hurt me when you wrote that,” the other man continued. “You are the only safe alpha I have ever… you are the only alpha I have ever…” He swore and his gaze fell to fix on the gentle sprinkle of bubbles rising from the bottom of his wine glass. “And now you tell me you are in trouble at work because of my messed up biology.”

 

“Hey, no,” Clark breathed, his anger forgotten. “That’s not… I was distracted.”

 

Bruce’s eyes flashed back to his. “By me?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“I have also been distracted,” he said sternly. “But I am mildly addicted to you and so it was a challenge to muster the resolve enough to break.”

 

“To break?” Clark said in disbelief. “Bruce, you can’t be serious.”

 

“In order to optimise the performance of our other identities it would be best if…”

 

“Shut up,” he said.

 

Through some freak accident of fate, Bruce obeyed.

 

“You said you loved me,” Clark croaked, instantly terrified.

 

A flash of some emotion shot across Bruce’s face too fast to be identified before it was gone.

 

“I did.”

 

“Why?” Clark pushed.

 

Bruce’s eyebrows lowered. “Guess,” he growled.

 

Clark tore his glasses from his face and rubbed at his forehead. “Fuck, Bruce,” he horsed. “Fuck I… don’t play games with me here.”

 

When he looked back up Bruce was studying him – _scrutinizing_ him – with the same dark demanding fascination Clark was becoming accustomed to. His heart shuddered dangerously in his chest under the unrelenting analysis; the beautiful brilliant attention of the World’s Greatest Detective.

 

Laid bare as he was, hopeful as he was, Clark didn’t have a chance of withholding anything from this man. He watched as Bruce unrolled him like a ball of wool, exposing with casual genius his poorly hidden secret just through the lay of his features. Understanding bloomed across Bruce’s face like the sun bursting above the horizon.

 

“You love me,” Bruce said slowly.

 

“I…”

 

“You do.” It wasn’t a question.

 

Clark flinched. “Yes…”

 

Instantly Bruce was on his feet and walking towards the exit, fingers groping inside his pockets, and face a storm of unidentifiable emotion.

 

“Bruce!”

 

“I can’t…” Bruce whispered as Clark scrambled to follow him. “I can’t do… that. I can’t…”

 

“No,” Clark grabbed his arm. “I’m not asking for anything, Bruce. Please… don’t walk out of here.”

 

“I…”

 

The waiter appeared with a hastily scribbled check and got an armful of loose notes shoved towards him in exchange. Paid, Bruce stepped around the wiry man and made for the exit. Clark cursed and began digging in his own pockets.

 

“He’s, um, paid for you,” the pale faced waiter informed him.

 

“Damn him, no he hasn’t,” Clark snarled. “I…”

 

Bruce disappeared out the door.

 

“I’ll be right back,” Clark promised and bolted after the other man in a movement he hoped looked impressively brisk, not superhuman. When he got outside Bruce was already halfway down the street. No one was around so Clark threw caution to the wind and flew after him in a blur of movement.

 

“Bruce, I’m sorry, but please just talk to me. You can’t just walk away…”

 

“I can, Clark,” the man said with a glare. “Get back on the ground.”

 

Clark dropped obediently to the pavement but kept pace with him as he walked. “You just told me you loved me,” he said. “What did you mean?”

 

“The same as you meant when you told me the same,” Bruce snapped.

 

“Please,” he begged. “I promise I won’t ask for anything but if you…”

 

Bruce stopped so suddenly Clark back peddled sharply to stand beside him.

 

“It was always you,” Bruce said softly frowning down at the sidewalk below him. “You were always there. You were there whenever I needed you and you left when I told you too. You… it’s always been you, Clark… I love you… I love you so much it hurt sometimes… but I can’t… I don’t know what I can do with that information. Because I can’t just… just give up…”

 

“I’ll never ask you too.”

 

Bruce tensed and then sighed. “I know… and that’s what scares me. Because… you’ll always give me more than I can give back. You’ll always…. I love you Clark but… God… but it hurts and… this whole mess…”

 

“I could never ask you to give me anything,” Clark said. “You’ve already given so much, Bruce. Everything. I know. I won’t ask you too give anymore. You don’t owe me anything.”

 

“I haven’t given you anything,” Bruce whispered.

 

“You’ve given me enough,” he promised.

 

He thought it would be earth shattering. He thought if he confessed his true feelings he would be shoved aside, deemed unsuitable, and removed from Bruce’s life with as much surety as a severed limb. He was wrong.

 

Clark reached forward and gently turned Bruce’s face towards him, stroked the proud shape of his jaw, and brought their lips together in a warm pressing kiss. There was no invasion of tongue, no crude tasting of hormones, but there was a hungry, almost desperate, openness. Bruce kissed him with a touch of exploration, of nervous curiosity, that slowly divulged into a simple strong connection as proudly beautiful as the man himself.

 

It was a kiss as shared between people of any gender or sexual caste, not just alpha and omega. A non discriminatory token of togetherness.

 

When Bruce drew back Clark leant forward to prolong the action as long as possible until their lips finally parted.

 

“I came here hating you,” Bruce whispered.

 

“And now?” he asked.

 

“I’m terrified,” Bruce assured him with a low growl.

 

Clark felt his lips twitch treacherously towards a smile. “Me too,” he promised.

 

Bruce frowned as if something had just occurred to him, bloomed into ugly black realisation in the pit of his stomach.

 

“Why me?”

 

“Because you’re brilliant,” Clark answered honestly, voice shaking.

 

Bruce didn’t say anything.

 

“And strong,” Clark continued. “Stronger than… than anyone I know. Stronger than me.”

 

He snorted. “Do you have any idea how ridiculous I am beside you?”

 

Clark blinked.

 

“I’m a broken little man in a batsuit, _an omega_ , and you’re…”

 

“Don’t give me that,” Clark said and found himself holding him; touching him and drawing in close in a motion that sent both their hearts skyrocketing. “I just told you I loved you and you’re giving me this power level bullshit,” he said unsteadily. “As if that mattered. As if you hadn’t saved me a hundred times.”

 

“Two hundred and seventeen.”

 

Clark felt his lips twitch toward a smile. “Compared to?”

 

“Two hundred and eleven.”

 

“Twelve,” he insisted.

 

“If you’re referring to the steel mill incident, I would have gotten out without your aid.”

 

Clark cocked an eyebrow. “Yeah? How?”

 

Bruce shrugged off his arms, “I’m Batman,” he answered and turned towards the hidden entrance to the secret armoury lodged between the pipelines and the pavement.


	11. Chapter 11

“They’re fucking.”

 

“Very observant,” Dick noted sarcastically without turning away from the deserted mouth of the alleyway. “Who are ‘they’?”

 

“You know who I’m talking about,” Jason snapped.

 

“I’m not sure,” Dick returned through a pinched smile, “but I’m going to guess the President and the First Lady.”

 

“Bats and the alien,” Jason specified with a growl.

 

Dick’s hand curled into a fist. “I kind of doubt it considering the boss is right over there,” he nodded up at the rooftop across the street where the man in question crouched almost invisible between two gargoyles. “Decidedly not being fucked,” Dick added, a biting undertone laced through his normally friendly voice.

 

“Not right now,” Jason hissed. “But they’re _fucking_.”

 

Dick regarded him with blatant irritation before decidedly returning his attention to their lookout. “They’ve been having sex since February,” he reminded him coldly.

 

“Once or twice every month as well as his heats,” Jason insisted angrily. “Now they’re doing it two to three times a week.”

 

“Too much information, dude,” Dick said stiffly.

 

“Don’t pretend you can’t smell it.”

 

“Can’t actually.”

 

“Huh, it’s because you’re a beta,” Jason replied bitterly.

 

“Or, because you won’t get your nose out of his groin,” he responded icily.

 

Jason glared down at where the other man knelt, balanced on the edge of the fire escape, and gritted his teeth against the instinctive growl that threatened at the back of his throat. Dick was usually so passive, so positive, but over the last few days he’d been growing colder towards Jason, their conversations sharp and accusatory.

 

He leant against the brick wall and glared across the empty street. It was late and the night air heavy and cold with the promise of a lurking storm. Tattered streetlights spot-lit segments of road and multicoloured neon lights shouted their message with a distinct angry buzz.

 

Dick knelt on the aged metal rail of the fire escape, balanced perfectly on the thin metal beam, and his head slightly cocked as he listened for the sound of approaching cars. Through the lenses in his hood he could pick out the curved shape of his spine and the catlike ripple of limber muscle tight against the second skin of his Nightwing costume.

 

His back was towards him.

 

That small detail of posture left a bitter taste in his mouth, brought an irrational rush of anger, and made him want to spin the man around and force him to acknowledge him.

 

To be the supportive smiling man he had known for so long and not… whatever this was.

 

He tried to remind himself that Dick was just Bruce’s irritating right hand. He was the blue eyed beta who would pander to the older man’s every need in the hopes of getting a scrap of condescending praise. He was _Dick_. Just Dick. And Dick had never mattered before.

 

He shouldn’t matter now.

 

It was almost half an hour before the weapons shipment, poorly disguised as a midnight convoy of flower trucks, ambled down the road. Each driver was apparently alone though through the lenses on his mask he could clearly see a second heat signature in each cockpit alone.

 

“They want us to attack them,” he commented as he slid a new carriage of bullets into gun with a solid satisfying _click_.

 

Dick’s smile stretched predatory below his mask. “Tonight’s their lucky night.”

 

Bruce gave the signal and they moved.

 

Dick swung over the railing with a fluid grace that had the moonlight gleaming off the sleek black shape of his uniform and dropped to the ally floor below. The dark pronged bike revved to life as he straddled the seat and kicked up the stand.

 

“Get down here.”

 

Jason ignored him and stepped over the railing to drop into the puddle laden cement of the narrow side street. He swung a leg over and sat behind him on the bike. “Move,” he growled.

 

“Only because I want to,” Dick said and kicked the bike into gear. The next moment they were racing out the mouth of the ally and were hit with the thick muggy chill of Gotham at night. A few drops of putrid rain fell in messy among the fetid spires of the city. It wasn’t near enough to wash away the smell of the Narrows.

 

Jason watched the city mesh and blur around them as Dick execrated and wove expertly along the pavement, between the parked cars, and through a line of traffic to slip easily among the convoy of rainbow trucks. Almost immediately the back of one truck rolled back with a loud clatter and two men peppered the road behind them with a clatter of automatic gunfire. Dick swerved and Jason returned fire.

 

“Knees and elbows!” Dick shouted.

 

“Wrists,” Jason hissed. He aimed and fired; saw the damage as the bullets ripped through bone and tendon, turning the fragile parts of the human hand into pulp. He crippled them so they could never pull a trigger again.

 

A man in the passenger side leant out the window with a shotgun propped against his shoulder. He disappeared in a frenzy of black pronged wings and shattered pieces of windshield.

 

“Got ‘em boss?” Dick quested over the earpiece.

 

“Go,” Bruce growled over the panicked gibbering of the driver.

 

The truck swerved into a deserted bus stop and Jason saw a flash of Gotham’s protector as he took off with the familiar hiss and whir of a grapple gun. For a moment Jason caught a glance at the infamous profile - the flared black wings of The Batman - before he lost sight of him against the dark grey swirl of the starless night.

 

“Shit he’s scary sometimes.”

 

“Tires Jason!”

 

He scowled and turned his attention back to the second truck as they drew abreast. A new spray of gunfire heralded their arrival and Dick manoeuvred to avoid the worst of it. A collection of stray bullets bounced off the armoured nose of the bike and chimed as they rained down on the tarmac.

 

“Now!”

 

Jason took out all four tires in quick succession and twisted in his seat to do the same to the third truck. Dick dropped cables from his bike and anchored the first of the two to the road while Bruce descended again to take care of the other. Dick was in hot pursuit of the last two trucks when a shrill wail sounded behind them.

 

“Fuck, that was fast,” Jason muttered.

 

“Too fast,” Dick agreed.

 

“Newsflash,” he snarled as he reversed his position on the bike to face back the way they had come. “The GCPD is corrupt as hell.”

 

Two squad cars were bearing down on them, red and blue lights blazing, and sirens screaming into the dead of the night. The officers inside didn't bother with a warning before aiming thier pistols through the windows.

 

“What the hell are you doing?!” Dick yelled over his shoulder.

 

Jason jammed one gun into its holster and pulled out a small automatic with explosive rounds. He loaded it as the policemen’s first bullets bounced off the road around him and turned it towards the bonnet of the closest car. The polished bodywork opened under the hail of gunfire and the car swerved to the side moments before the oil burst into flame. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the policemen scrambling away from the car seconds before it exploded.

 

“One.”

 

Before he could aim at the other the batmobile – remotely guided by Alfred – slid out of the night with a deep throated purr and shoulder charged the remaining squad car into the open mouth of a side street.

 

“Two,” Jason noted with satisfaction.

 

One of the two remaining flower trucks skidded to a stop. Jason once again saw Batman move like a shadow from the unconscious driver through the shattered remnants of the windshield and up into the night.

 

“We’re coming up to the highway!” Dick called over his shoulder. “Bring it down!” They were abreast with the last truck. The onboard gunmen seemed to have realised the true danger and were shooting wildly into the air. It kept Bruce at bay but gave Jason an opening.

 

He sprang onto the passenger side door and pulled the startled gunmen out through the gaping window. The man hit the road with a crack of bones and a broken cry of pain. Jason didn’t slow. He swung in through the open window and slammed the startled driver against the steering wheel. It wasn't as elegant as Bruce's quick sleeper holds but it did the job. The large man slumped unconscious across the dash with a garbled moan. With his foot off the accelerator the truck slowed. When Jason pulled the handbrake he heard the men in the back cry out in chorus as the weapons shipment skidded to a halt.

 

There was a moment of stillness broken only by the distant whoop of sirens and the rumble of the nearby highway.

 

"Too easy," he said with satisfaction.

 

Batman landed with a loud thump on the hood of the truck. A flurry of memory cloth settled around broad shoulders, bloody knuckles tucked a grapple gun into his belt, and lens layered eyes shone in the darkness.

 

“Out,” he growled.

 

Jason kicked open the driver’s side door and clambered over the broad back of the unconscious man to jump down to the glass strewn street below. Dick pulled up beside him with a purr of well run engines.

 

Bruce ignored them and tapped the side of his cowl to relay the licence plate numbers through to Alfred for analysis and then told the man to go to bed. The night was theirs. Once done he turned to regard the two men standing on the street below him.

 

“Are we finished here?” Dick asked.

 

Bruce stepped off the car and dropped to the tarmac beside them. Broad muscles moved fit and fluid under close fitting hybrid material, the exposed line of his jaw sat under a dark shadow of facial hair, and as he drew up to full height he cast the two younger men into shadow. A gust of wind made his wraithlike non-scent eerily evident. Even knowing his secret identity it was hard to believe this man, The Batman, was anything other than a high level alpha.

 

Or perhaps even something more than that; an elemental spirit of vengeance that wore no sexual caste.

 

“Get back to the cave,” Batman growled. “You’re done for tonight.”

 

Dick shrugged in easy acceptance.

 

Jason scowled. He wasn’t surprised they were heading back to the cave. It was late, almost four, and this was the last big bust of the night. What surprised him was Bruce wasn’t coming with them.

 

“Where are you going?” He asked.

 

Batman’s white eyed glare turned slowly towards him. “I’ll deal with you later,” he rumbled.

 

The batmobile drew to a halt beside them and the door swung upwards like the beseeching arm of a neglected lover. Bruce slipped inside and quickly activated the manual control override.

 

“Stay out of sight.” He ordered and with a roar of engines drove into the scattered stream of early morning traffic. There were always cars on the main streets in Gotham.

 

“Fuck!” Jason shoved his guns back into their holsters. “What the fuck is he bitching about now?”

 

“My guess,” Dick said with a curl of lip, “the police officers that just escaped an exploding squad car, the bullets aimed at arteries, and guy you dropped out the window of a moving truck.”

 

“They survived,” Jason snapped.

 

Dick’s return look was hidden behind his mask but Jason could feel the heat of it, the unexplained anger. “Those sirens are almost here,” Dick said, voice clipped and cold. “Get on the bike or I’m leaving you here.”

 

They rode in silence.

 

By the time Dick drove back into the body of the cave Jason had already torn off his hood and was glaring at the empty spot where the batmobile usually parked. In a few hours the early morning shift workers would start populating the streets and the city would begin to wake. It didn’t make sense to stay out passed four unless he was following a specific trail. Either he had a case they didn’t know about or…

 

“He’s fucking him now.”

 

“For fucks sake,” Dick ripped off his mask and glared at him. “Will you get over it?”

 

“Why the hell should I?”

 

“Because it’s none of your fucking business!”

 

Jason swung himself off the back of the bike and dropped his hood to yank his arms from his jacket. “I know Bruce doesn’t want to admit it but I’m this pack’s only alpha,” he grunted.

 

“So?!” Dick kicked off the bike and spun to face him. “I know you’ve got some fucked up idea that because you’re the only alpha in this house, and he’s the only omega, he should bend over whenever you’re in the room. But guess what; he _has_ an alpha and he wouldn’t want you even if he didn’t.”

 

Jason felt his lips peel back from his teeth. “You wouldn’t understand, _beta_.”

 

Dick snorted. “Pull your head out of your arse. You’re not special just because you drool when you fuck.”

 

“Omegas need…”

 

“Omegas don’t need shit! They’re people and they can sort themselves out like the rest of us!”

 

“He’s an _alien_ ,” Jason sneered.

 

“And you’re a brat,” Dick countered. “You don’t even like him, Jay, but you get a whiff and suddenly he’s your blow up sex toy. Only you can’t cope with the fact he has an actual brain. You can’t cope with the fact he can choose who he wants to fuck. And now, to top it off, you’re whining about being an alpha, about how no one understands you, as if there weren’t a million other alphas out there that _somehow_ manage to keep their cocks under control.”

 

“Fuck you.”

 

“Hah!” Dick barked with harsh, angry, laughter. “I wish! Oh no, I better not say that or you might think I’m just trying to pacify you. To be your little bitch just to keep this pack together.”

 

Jason stared at him.

 

“Well, fuck the pack.” Dick continued. “And fuck you! Next time you do some stupid shit I’m not going to get in the way. It’s about time Bruce showed you why he’s top dog around here.”

 

He turned around and strode towards the showers, swearing loudly under his breath and running his hand through his too long hair.

 

Jason stared after him, rooted to the floor.

 

Dick. Dick the arrogant prick who had teased him about the ridiculous robin costume as if he hadn’t been wearing it the year prior. Dick the sassy circus boy who could dance around him in training with infuriating ease. Dick the docile beta who always welcomed him back no matter how many times he broke away… Dick.

 

“Hey!”

 

He ripped himself from the floor and raced after the other man. He reached up just as he shoulder charged his way into the showers, yanking a glove off with his teeth.

 

“Hey,” he grabbed his arm and pulled him back towards him. “You want to fuck?”

 

Dick blinked up at him. “ _That’s_ what you got from that?”

 

“We could do it here.”

 

“You’ve got some nerve.”

 

“Before he gets back.”

 

“Bloody hell, you can’t be serious,” Dick hissed.

 

“Come on,” Jason said, backing him up against the wall. “Let’s fuck.”

 

“I’m angry enough to wring your neck right now.”

 

“Kinky.”

 

“No,” Dick snapped. “No, you don’t get to do that. I’m the one that makes the shitty jokes in this house. You’re the… the idiot who doesn’t know when to quit.”

 

“Okay,” Jason purred. “Let’s fuck.”

 

Dick sighed and closed his eyes. “I usually like to be propositioned a little more eloquently,” he noted dryly. “Maybe candles, dinner, a bit of romance.”

 

Jason pressed his body against Dick’s, crushed him to the wall, and nosed aside his mane of hair to scrape his teeth against the side of his neck; nipping the spot where an omega gland would lie if he was of the caste. “Yes or no, Dick,” he whispered against the shuddering skin.

 

Arms tightened around him in a crushing coil. “Only because I want to.”


	12. Chapter 12

The full wet pucker of crushing lips parted against his, sucked greedily the tip of his tongue, and drew him into the hot, hungry, cavern of his mouth. Dick moaned as the fierce, fiery, taste of alpha flooded across his palate with staggering intensity.

 

It wasn’t beautiful. No. It was better than that. Ugly, forceful, but utterly undeniably _right_.

 

He was a low level beta which meant he was closer to omega than alpha. While this slight swing in his hormones wasn’t nearly enough for his body to develop the anatomy of Bruce’s it did leave him with a slight preference for the alpha dynamic. This manifested in small ways. It left a slight sensitive spot on his upper neck, gave him a tight warm feeling in his abdomen at the scent of an unattached alpha, and made the bitter taste of Jason’s hormone charged saliva send stinging bolts of pleasure from his mouth straight down to his groin.

 

It was disgustingly delicious, utterly animalistic… but best of all, it was Jason. Jason clutching him, kissing him, and sucking carnivorously on his tongue. Jason grinding against him, roughly groping at his hip, and scraping a stumble lined cheek against his skin. Jason.

 

His body shook with raw desire at the thought.

 

The alpha drew back and Dick followed him, prolonging the crass connection for as long as possible, before their lips broke with a wet smack.

 

“You like that,” Jason growled with satisfaction.

 

“Come on,” Dick moaned, voice broken and needful.

 

Jason grunted and leant forward, roughly nosed his jaw aside, and bit his neck. The clamp of teeth was hard and hungry; a possessive pinch that pressed down with bruising force just under his jawbone.

 

“F-fuck!” Dick squirmed. “I’m not an omega you know!”

 

Jason let the skin drop from his mouth and licked the mark he’d left. “Then stop whining like one.”

 

“I don’t whine,” he insisted.

 

“Yeah you do,” the other man said. “Pretty little _pleading_ whines. Do it again for me.”

 

Dick glared at him. “I. Don’t. Whine.”

 

Jason’s smile was too wide; the toothy gape of a grinning shark. Dick’s attention locked on the too wet shine of his lips and the rich earthy flavour still tingling warm in his mouth. He licked his own lips and looked up into his eyes; dark, half hidden in the shadows, and pinned possessively onto him.

 

Dick had managed to drag the young alpha upstairs from the showers, still half in costume, and had staggered into the first guestroom they found. The mattress was bare and the furniture covered in white sheets that gleamed eerily in the pale light of the lingering moon. It didn’t matter. Even through the gloom of the skeletal bedroom he could still see the dark focus of Jason’s eyes.

 

Locked onto him.

 

Dick thought of all the times Jason’s attention had been snagged on Bruce, riveted to the other man purely because of his omega allure, even as Bruce violently rejected him. Not tonight. For what seemed like the first time Jason’s focus was fixed onto him and the silent spotlight was… intoxicating.

 

The fact that this had happened while completely unarmed with any scent made the victory all the sweeter. They hadn’t made it into the showers despite Jason’s avid suggestion. Dick didn’t want anything to interrupt this. As such their identifying musk was still masked with the chemically induced non-scent of their vigilante personas.

 

Dick hooked his arms over the other man’s neck and pulled himself into another plundering kiss, bodies pressed together, and groins crushed in a rough ready grind. Jason sunk his teeth into Dick’s bottom lip and Dick groped at the front of the other man’s bullet proof breastplate. Before he found any catches Jason’s own hands sunk to slip knowledgably under the seam between the top half of Dick’s uniform and the bottom.

 

Jason pulled the clinging hybrid fabric over his head and Dick shuddered as the chill air of the room ghosted over his exposed flesh. Jason didn’t allow him a moments respite as he pushed him back onto the bed and reached for his boots.

 

Dick kicked him away. “Get your clothes off,” he panted. “I’ll do this.”

 

Jason scowled but complied. Dick pushed his boots off and wriggled out of the bottom half of his uniform as Jason shrugged off the pieces of his own bulky costume. Dick was acutely aware he was naked and being watched long before Jason finally shed the last of his clothing.

 

And then he was being crushed down into the mattress by the bare body of the other man. Dick felt himself tremble as he surrendered to the weight of the younger, stronger, male; revelled in the hint of abuse as he was bodily held down and bitten, as he was taken without apology, and as Jason grasped him with bruising force. Their cocks were hot against their stomachs, lips hot and swollen, and limps tangled in a messy _cling_.

 

Good… so good…

 

Jason shuffled down his body to scrape his teeth against a nipple. Dick wrapped his arms around Jason’s head, pulled him hard against him, and arched into the steaming wetness of his mouth. He gritted his teeth against the groans of mixed pain and pleasure as Jason attacked the sensitive skin with aggressive purpose.

 

Somewhere at the back of his mind Dick was aware of the noises he was making. The small gasps, groans, and soft hisses of pain. The tell tale sounds of his desire despite everything this man had put him through. Despite everything he had put the entire pack through.

 

He hated Jason. He hated his arrogant idiotic behaviour, his elitist alpha self-assurance, and is petulant refusal to accept the pack as it was. But he also loved him. He loved the turbulent darkness in his eyes, the integrity and ingenuity he would show in the midst of battle, and the passion of which he went after what he wanted. He loved their old companionable friendship, the gruff assertiveness of their conversations, and the entirely alpha possessiveness with which he pressed him down into the mattress now.

 

Jason’s fingers hooked around Dick’s calves and manhandled his legs up around his waist. Dick clung to him and thrust frantically against the firm flat panels of abdominal muscle.

 

“So desperate,” Jason leered, hot breath gushing against his shoulder. “You _need_ it, huh?”

 

Dick clutched a handful of short black hair, yanked the alpha’s head back, and dragged him forward into a punishing kiss. The burning tang of alpha flooded his senses; left him dizzy, reeling, in the predatory _press_ of his hormones. Not Bruce’s sweet enthralling summon, nor a beta’s flirtatiously varied scent, but the strong filling flavour of a high level alpha. Unapologetically powerful and harsh like a long low cord on a bass guitar.

 

Jason…

 

Dick felt the nerves at the end of his cock alight with a spasm of sensation that sent the blood rushing to swell his already aching member into near painful erection.

 

“Jason…”

 

“Tell me you need it.”

 

“Screw you,” he snarled.

 

Jason pushed a finger into him and he yelped in surprise.

 

The alpha eyed him with the intensity of a hunting predator as he remorselessly pushed a second finger inside him. The dry stretch was painful and the rough probing broad and unstimulating.

 

“H-hey…”

 

Jason brought up his other hand and spat some of his excess salvia into his palm.

 

Dick swallowed the straggled sound he made as the wet heat of that palm pressed against his entrance in an unforgiving scrape of flesh on flesh.

 

“I… I’ve never…”

 

“Yes you have.”

 

“No I…”

 

The only alpha he’d been with before was Koriand’r and she hadn’t been interested in topping him, preferring instead to stimulate her exclusively feminine sex organ. He felt a sting of alarm as he realised – _really_ realised – what Jason wanted from him.

 

“Hey,” he tried to grin. “D-do you want to just… I’m pretty good at oral or we could…”

 

“Nah.”

 

“Jason I… I’m serious. I never…”

 

Jason looked at him. “Seriously? You’re telling me _you_ topped Roy?”

 

He frowned. “I never had sex with Roy,” he croaked.

 

Jason snorted. “Come on. He was doing the whole possessive alpha thing on you.”

 

Dick blinked. “Really?”

 

“Yeah. Brought you food and everything.” Tongue scraped against a scar slicing across his sternum. “God, I wish I could smell you.” He pushed a third finger into him and Dick arched with a hiss of pain.

 

“Man, I… I really don’t know about this.”

 

Jason kissed him once more; a quick touch of lip on lip that left his skin tingling with the barest taste of his heightened hormones. Jason wasn’t one for seduction but the consuming chemicals in him were beginning to substitute for that tenfold. The new sheen of sweat to his skin had just begun to break through his scent mask and the hot urgent flavour of him began to seep off his skin in a pheromone mushroom cloud. Heavy with dark demand… and with the promise of a just reward.

 

“I… ah…” he squirmed. “You got a condom?”

 

Jason stiffened.

 

“Fuck man, you got to get a condom.”

 

“It’ll be fine.”

 

“No, I ain’t no omega; I don’t need that shit. And I don’t know where you’ve stuck that thing.”

 

Jason growled and pulled away from him.

 

Dick shuddered violently as he was left hollow and uncovered; the cold night air pressing cold and cruel against the sweat on his skin and the empty gap left inside him clenching neglected around the absence of Jason’s fingers.

 

“Jay?”

 

“I’m coming!”

 

Dick reached down to offer some relief to his straining member as the other man groped in the darkness for his discarded clothing. He heard the soft cringle as a packet was found and the harsh rip as it was torn open with bare teeth. Jason swore under his breath as he fumbled with the slick sheathe.

 

His heart was hammering with a mix of nervous anticipation and desire as he saw the shadow of Jason stand and turn back towards him.

 

“Roll over.”

 

Dick shuddered, secretly loving the deep husking growl of the other man’s voice. “Why?” He questioned breathlessly.

 

“Better for first time.”

 

“I…” Dick swallowed the flush of stomach tightening fear at the thought of what he was about to do. It was irrational. He wanted this. He’d fantasised about _this_. “Okay,” he said with forced normality. “Who wants to look at your ugly mug anyway, huh?” He flashed a fluttering grin, faking his usual easy bravado.

 

“Now,” Jason growled.

 

He rolled and after a brief hesitation tucked his legs under him and levied himself up off the mattress. He felt the bedding shift under the weight of the other man as he climbed on behind him

 

There was a pause and a heated hand wrapped around his hip. Dick jerked with a hiss of surprise as the other hand rubbed more salvia against him; pressing the hot slick wetness around the tight pucker of his rim. The preparation was brief before the other hand moved to parallel the first and seize control of his hip.

 

Dick caught his breath in a shuddering gasp as the head of Jason’s cock pressed against his entrance. He was hard, _huge_ , and pushed forward with slow but wholly irresistible force. Dick gritted his teeth against the treacherous sounds of his discomfort and wriggled uselessly against Jason’s indomitable grip.

 

He felt himself stretch, felt the head of his shaft slide in, and blinked through a strange moment of estranged emptiness before he felt the blunt assault of Jason’s member inside him.

 

He wasn’t nearly near prepped enough for this. The ring of his arse burnt as it was stretched around the other man’s pleasure, his insides felt forced and painfully full, and the grip of Jason’s fingers were bruising against his hips. It didn’t matter. He didn’t care if his body was ready or not, he didn’t care if this hurt… because he’d waited in the wings too long, watched Jason from afar for too long, to stop now for something as stupid as pain.

 

God, he was _still_ coming.

 

Dick gasped and whimpered as he was slowly, deliberately, penetrated. He felt Jason push in far deeper than he even thought possible, felt the seemingly endless length shove aside parts inside he didn’t know existed, and felt a deep ache as his body desperately adjusted to the unfamiliar invasion; as it tried to adapt to having a cock inside it for the first time.

 

It seemed hours later, hours of Jason’s slow torturous advance, when he finally felt to hot press of Jason’s pelvis against his arse. He let out a sigh of relief. The action moved his stiff body and he became intimately aware of how deeply he was impaled by the other man, how far he was stretched.

 

Jason moved.

 

“No!” Dick cried out.

 

The other man paused.

 

“Just… ah… give me a moment…”

 

The bare mattress below him appeared too close, the checkerboard of shadow and light a hypnotic normality that seemed inexplicably perverse; as if the world had not right to look the way it did, sound the way it did, when he was bent over a bed with Jason buried hilt deep in him.

 

He’d bitten his own lip and the taste of his blood was a metallic tingle at the base of his tongue.

 

Jason leant forward, keeping his own hips skilfully still, and slid his tongue along the curve of Dick’s spine; crudely tasting his sweat in a vulgar display of desire that turned to dominance as he sunk his teeth into the back of his neck.

 

“Ah, Jason… just… please…”

 

“You’re so tight,” he rumbled.

 

The low tone of his voice, the alpha growl, sent a flutter of excitement deep into his belly.

 

Alpha. Jason was an alpha and he was here with him despite the high level omega no doubt shedding his clothes in the cave at that very moment. It was a primeval victory, an instinctual pleasure, and it felt… so fucking sweet. To be noticed. To be desired. To be taken.

 

Jason let go of one hip to stroke his fingers roughly up his side and hook around the front of his chest. He pulled him back, crushed his arched spine into Jason’s chest, and brought him closer to the enriching scent of his dense alpha aroma. He sucked in a deep, open mouthed, breath as Jason buried his face in his hair and showered his neck with tooth lined kisses.

 

“Now?” Jason said against his skin.

 

“I…”

 

He twitched his hips and Dick croaked out a broken moan at the alien sting of fulfilling agony. “N-now,” he confirmed.

 

Jason sucked one last hickey onto his shoulder before he started rocking back and forth, moving in and out of him in mere millimetres at first. Every forward thrust felt like a targeted punch deep in his gut, every draw back a fragile release. He twitched violently and grunted in pain.

 

“You good?”

 

“Fine…” he hissed.

 

Jason made a sound, deep in the back of his throat, and he felt the arm around him tighten. “You’re such a shit liar,” he growled, his hips still shifting agonising back and forth.

 

“We’ve… ah… already had this conversation,” Dick managed.

 

Jason grunted.

 

“Out on the lawn,” he prompted. “When we…”

 

“Shut up.”

 

Jason shifted his angle and began to thrust into him in earnest.

 

Dick tensed and hissed through his teeth at the abuse. But, underneath it all, he felt himself shift to allow for it. He felt himself take Jason smoother with each targeted roll of hip. He felt the pain melt into something else. It hurt. It hurt but it also felt… good.

 

He shuddered and arched against Jason, grunting with him as his body took him with increasing ease. He began to revel in the new distinctly pleasurable ache of his abused entrance, the raw satisfying full feeling that would come when Jason buried himself right into him, and the disgustingly lewd idea of what was happening to him.

 

The air was full of Jason’s low grunts and his own broken whines and shallow gasps as he was penetrated with persistent punishing force; enough to jerk his body roughly forward with every thrust.

 

He was grateful for the arm holding him up around his chest as his own arms shook and threatened to give out below him. But he needed more and he needed the use of those arms to get it.

 

Dick gritted his teeth and pulled one hand off the mattress to grope clumsily back towards himself. His fingers bumped against his still captured hip and Jason’s fingers there. A quick change of plans and he seized that hand, pulled it from his battered bone, and dragged it around to his own weeping manhood.

 

Jason muttered something intelligible under his breath and shrugged off his hand to wrap a tight sweaty fist around Dick’s neglected cock.

 

“F-fuck!”

 

Jason sat up, unhooking his arm, and pulling apart their bodies. Dick slammed his hand back into the mattress as Jason began to pound into him with a forceful snap of hip. Dick cried out as his cock was violently fisted in time.

 

The sensations built with destructive intensity to a rapid harried spike of agonised pleasure that peaked in a confusing multitude of points in his body. Dick moaned, a long broken note, and spilt his load down onto the bed below.

 

Jason wiped his hand on Dick’s thigh and resumed his previous hold of his hip as he began to drive into him with newfound urgency. Dick gritted his teeth and bowed his head as the man fucked him with enough force to rattle his bones. Fucked him until he was sure he couldn’t take anymore. Fucked him for a time that felt like years and seconds at the same time.

 

Jason came with a low, satisfied, growl and collapsed down on top of him. He fell onto the bed under the greater weight of the younger man and grunted as the careless drape of Jason’s body shoved the length of his cock deeper into him.

 

God, he was still so big. Fuck it if he didn’t feel bigger. And tight. And getting tighter…

 

Dick jerked and yelped in pain as the movement pulled hard at the heavy fullness inside him.

 

“Jay!”

 

Jason grabbed his arms, interlocked their fingers and pressed him back down into the bed. “Go to sleep.”

 

“No!” He wriggled and flinched. “Fuck I… you knotted me!”

 

Low. “So?”

 

“I’m not exactly designed for this, arsehole.”

 

“You sound fine to me.”

 

“I…” he shifted. “Ah… fuck… Omega’s _enjoy_ this?”

 

“Go to sleep.”

 

“How?” He snapped. “You knotted me.”

 

“Stop bitching. It won’t hurt if you stay still,” Jason growled.

 

“Why didn’t you hold it, or pull out, or something?”

 

Jason snorted. “You’re too fucking hot for that. Go to sleep.”

 

Dick slumped back onto the mattress muttering random death threats under his breath. Secretly he stored away the sentence with a private, almost teenage, glee.

 

Jason thought he was hot.


	13. Chapter 13

Clark’s indestructible arms wrapped gently around him, his hips moved in a slow sure rhythm, and his strangely soft fingers stroked soothing circles into his skin. Bruce grunted against the man’s hair as Clark glided in and out of him, clutched with wanton greed at the broad shape of his shoulders, and rolled his hips up to meet with every stroke of the other man’s length.

 

It was a slow kind of sex that came with a natural lazy ease. Like a wine to be swirled and savoured instead of their usual hot fast shot of bourbon that would leave him feeling deliciously used, deeply full, and yet still keenly unquestionably dominant as Clark obediently moved to please him at the slightest growl.

 

It still amazed him Clark could satisfy so many facets of him; play to both his omega needs and his occasionally contradicting desires. While perhaps not the most enlightened alpha on the planet he was defiantly the most comprehensive Bruce had ever come across. The only one he wanted in both mind and body, the only one he trusted with every part of him, and the only one he had ever even entertained the idea of a bond with.

 

Even if that idea still terrified him.

 

Clark’s lips were pressed against the sensitive spot on his neck, the wet presence of his tongue slipping beseechingly between the hard shape of his teeth to stroke the shape of his omega gland; silently asking permission. Bruce felt his heart lurch into his mouth and his body tense around the length of the other man’s pleasure, but didn’t move away.

 

As they came to the end of their second week after the pivotal night in the restaurant Clark’s unspoken request for his long denied bite had become more prevalent. If they were kissing he would often press his lips against the side of his neck, during sex he would lick him there, and if they spent anytime lying down together he would nuzzle under his jaw. Every time he did Bruce would either shudder and turn away or stiffen and swallow the tang of irrational fear.

 

Most omegas had their first bond in high school during the week long relationships so many teenagers seemed to fling themselves between. He knew one bite was no big deal. Clark had even bitten him before when Bruce Wayne had first been outed as an omega. One bite was not a bond and even if they stayed together, if he kept letting Clark bite him, if they _did_ bond… it would be almost a year before it was a properbond. One with serious repercussions if their mutual addiction wasn’t regularly sated.

 

It made no sense to deny Clark his satisfaction. It was cruel now that they were entertaining the possibility of a relationship. But he had never bonded before and the idea, the loss of control, the dependence… was petrifying.

 

It was only fair. He was already somewhat addicted. It was only fair to allow Clark the same pleasure. He wanted Clark to have that. He…

 

Clark spoke against his throat in a hot gush of air. “Can I?’

 

“Uh.”

 

Clark’s pace hadn’t changed. A slam slam slam that clenched hot and tight in his belly, trickled wet down onto hypersensitive thighs, but didn’t push him over the edge. Kept him prisoner just a few steps away from orgasm. Like a pot of water softly simmering on a stove; bubbling but not vigorously enough to spill.

 

“I don’t… know,” he grunted.

 

“Okay,” Clark accepted that without a hint of the disappointment he must be feeling and moved away from his neck to shower his face in random kisses.

 

“I’m sorry,” he rasped.

 

“Hey,” Clark said, smiling crookedly down at him through his flushed cheeks, eyes sparkling an impossibly beautiful alien blue. “You don’t have to.”

 

“God I… fuck…”

 

He heard himself groan as his eyes fluttered involuntarily closed. He could feel the scrape of the other man’s half formed knot against his entrance; hard, heavy, and pressing against the pleasure centre with every stroke of his cock. The head of his length brushed fleetingly against a spot deep inside him and he twisted with a snarl of momentary pleasure.

 

Clark pressed a wet kiss onto his lips, mouth open and empty, begging to be filled. He didn’t need to wait for a more formal invitation. He plunged into the welcoming cavern and gorged on the rich bitter taste of alpha hormone, spiced with the unique flavour of Clark. Bold, brazen, and unembarrassed in his singularity and unknown - almost hidden – exotic alien sharpness.

 

“More,” he grunted. “Harder. Faster.”

 

Clark obeyed with a low, drawn out, moan. He untangled his arms and slammed his fists down on the body of the couch either side of him. The wooden frame creaked alarmingly and Bruce greedily edged his legs up higher, allowing for deeper penetration as the Kryptonian began to obediently drive into him with aggressive intent.

 

Bruce reached up, hooked his arms over the other man’s neck, and pulled himself up against his chest to steal a second starved kiss. Soon they were grunting into each others mouths. The taste of salvia and sweat an illicit cocktail of sex and pheromones that filled the air around them with a rich swirl of different scents. Alpha and omega.

 

He felt his body clench and shudder.

 

“Knot?” Clark husked against his lips.

 

He nodded and sucked hungrily on the sweat clinging to Clark’s clean shaven upper lip. Clark’s groan spilt scoring hot air across his chin and down his neck.

 

“God, Bruce…”

 

They came in chorus, mutual groans smudged together, and mouths open against each other. Clark slammed his eyes closed as they changed to glitter red and the exhale blasted icy air against Bruce’s neck.

 

He didn’t care. Couldn’t care. Not in that moment.

 

Bruce felt his brow crumble as his body clenched greedily around the swell of Clark’s cock, locking them together, and sending a feverous sting of pained pleasure through him; hard on the heels of his debilitating orgasm.

 

Clark caught him as he slumped and rolled them both so Bruce lay draped across the other man on the rumbled sofa. He allowed Clark to manipulate his boneless body into a more comfortable position and gave himself to the omega inside him purring at the precise pressure of the alpha’s knot. Clark reached up to slide his fingers across his face, checking to see if he was awake. Bruce sucked his wandering thumb into his mouth and chewed sleepily on the indomitable skin.

 

A little over half and hour later Bruce pulled himself off the shrinking knot with a flinch and padded across Clark’s bright apartment into the kitchen. Clark stayed on the sofa and watched him with a knowing smile as he picked up a banana and leant against the kitchen counter to peel and chew through it thoughtfully.

 

During the lowest point in the cycles omegas developed a nagging appetite to make up for their almost unavoidable weight loss during heats. In the hunter gatherer breeder society of early packs this was the period hopeful alphas would present food to try and win the unattached omegas.

 

He had no doubt Clark took some satisfaction in seeing him eat from _his_ kitchen. Damn alien was still an alpha after all.

 

He took an apple as well and strode to the discarded clothes on the floor to start digging through his pockets.

 

“Don’t you dare,” Clark growled.

 

Bruce cocked and unimpressed eyebrow towards him and pulled out a handful of bills. Clark glared as he dropped them on the coffee table before stepping forward and slumping back down on top of the other man.

 

“I can pay for a couple pieces of fruit without your help, you know.”

 

He grunted.

 

After the confession of love came logistics.

 

Neither of them wanted to advertise a potential relationship, nor did they feel the need to share the news of their experimentation, and so it became an unofficial secret; not explicitly confidential but not overt either.

 

It was a romance that if successful could wrench apart the tailored workings of Bruce’s pack and his place in society. It would change Clark’s status at work as well. There was no sense in threatening that structure for the first few fragile weeks of their newfound love affair. Thus, their meetings were usually stolen pieces of time before or after his patrol or in the middle of the day during Clark’s lunch break.

 

Bruce found their time together strangely familiar.

 

They had been having sex for a little under a year and mating for about half. Before that they had been friends for a substantial stretch of time. Their relationship was simply an application of both practises at once; sex and friendship, in which he could revel in the strange yet familiar new partnership they shared.

 

Their time together was usually pre planned but what would happen during them was not. Often Clark would just sit them on top of a building and they would share food as he listened to the other man tell him about his day. Sometimes they would book out a hotel room and crash onto the mattress in a frenzy of kisses and deliciously messy sex. Occasionally they would merely spend time together as they went about their usual tasks.

 

He helped Clark refurbish his kitchen, watched with an instinctual fascination as he cooked, and scowled as unfinished articles were repeatedly swept out of his hands.

 

“Not until they’re done,” Clark would tell him with a sheepish smile. “Only Lois sees them before hand.”

 

Bruce had never been so simply yet surely jealous before.

 

When Clark came over to the cave he stared in utter shock over Bruce’s shoulder at the evidence of his information and extensive infiltration into Gotham City’s criminal and non criminal organisations on the screen of the computer.

 

“When you said it was your city I didn’t think you actually ruled it.”

 

“Just a little,” he answered gruffly.

 

That night they had sex on the bed he usually used only for his heats. It was strange being in the vault like room at the back of the cave while so coherent. Out of habit he turned the lights off and later wished he hadn’t.

 

He was tired of always being with Clark in the dark. Of being seen but unable to see.

 

Part of him wondered why he had ever wanted them off, ever wanted to maintain a distance between them, and had ever been so terrified of the easy uninhibited relationship that seemed to be blooming so naturally between them. But even as he entertained those thoughts he knew this secretive honeymoon phase couldn’t last. It was already waning thin as Clark began to silently ask for the one thing long denied that would progress their relationship into a place he had never been before, with anyone.

 

Because even as Clark pulled away from his neck and told him it was okay Bruce knew it wasn’t.

 

He was holding onto a basic addiction rooted from their shared sex and the taste of his mouth but he was denying the same thing to Clark. He was pushing away any chance that these fleeting feelings of infatuation would ever become a bond.

 

Later, Bruce decided for the twentieth time that week. He would let him bite him some time later. When he was calmer. When he wasn’t plagued with this childlike dread of what one bite might do.

 

God, but he would keep telling himself that for years and never let it happen. And Clark… Clark, he now knew, was too important to lose over something so trivial.

 

“Clark I…”

 

“Hmm?” The man blinked open a blazing blue eye to look up at him.

 

“Do you want…?”

 

Clark watched him.

 

“I…” he changed his tack. “We should… think about… what happens now.”

 

Clark shifted and looked squarely up at him, earnest curiosity plain across his face. “What happens now?”

 

Bruce licked his lips and looked aside. “I… I need you to bite me but…”

 

Clark closed his eyes again. “When you’re ready.”

 

“But it’s not a big deal.”

 

“It clearly is.”

 

He growled. “People do it all the time.”

 

“I can bite you now if you like.”

 

Bruce felt a surge of unease. Clark either heard the uptake in his heart or smelt the shift in his pheromones. He sighed and wrapped his arms around him. “I don’t know all you’ve done over the years, Bruce, but I can guess a few alphas have probably snapped at you. It’s okay if you don’t want to yet.”

 

So good to him.

 

Bruce made up his mind.

 

He swallowed down the fear and slid up Clark’s body to roughly graze the side of his neck against his face. Clark coughed, hit with an unexpected surge of pheromones, and twisted away.

 

“Bruce…”

 

“Bite me.”

 

“But…”

 

“Now,” he snarled.

 

Clark shuddered and hooked a hand around the back of his neck to draw his throat down against his mouth. He kissed his jugular, scraped his tongue against the stubble under his jaw, and nosed around to lap once at the hidden gland on the left of his neck.

 

“You know,” Clark spoke against his skin. “My parents would disown me if I bit you and didn’t at least go around and introduce myself to your family.”

 

“You know my family,” Bruce snapped. “Get on with it.”

 

“I barely know Alfred,” Clark corrected him. “And I’ve met Nightwing and a Robin that apparently isn’t a Robin anymore.”

 

“No…”

 

“And all really only as Superman.”

 

“Fine!” He pushed himself against Clark’s mouth. “You can meet them. Now, bite me before I change my mind.”

 

He felt Clark’s lips curl into a smile, the steaming wet of his saliva as he opened his mouth, and the smooth double crescent of his teeth as he bit onto his gland with instinctual precision.

 

A bite was pleasurable for an alpha not an omega; a way for the more aggressive caste to taste and mark their chosen mate in one foul swoop. He felt Clark shudder under him, felt those teeth tighten on his neck, and the low broken groan of pleasure that gurgled from his alpha’s throat.

 

His alpha.

 

His mate.

 

Bruce closed his eyes against the pain of the bite and the strange light headed feeling as his body poured hormones into his gland; trying to hook the attached alpha on his flavour.

 

Omegas could take in alpha hormones in a number of ways; unprotected sex, kissing, and even just tasting the excess bodily chemicals on the skin of their chosen mate. Alpha’s weren’t so lucky. An alpha could really only directly ingest omega hormone from a bite. As such, bites were _strong_. An omega would have to kiss an aroused alpha for ten minutes to receive the same amount of hormones an alpha would after thirty seconds chewing on an omega gland.

 

“That’s enough,” he growled.

 

Clark flinched and released his neck with a strangled gasp of air. Bruce leant back and regarded him. His pupils were blown, cheeks flushed, and throat working to swallow the excess salvia. He gasped for breath, wiped his mouth on the back of his forearm, and muttered something in Kryptonian.

 

Bruce fingered the slight swell of his gland and hissed with pain as his fingers bumped against the new bruising there.

 

“I’m sorry I… I forget you’re… so high level…” His lips bent in a crooked smile. “It’ll be fine tomorrow.”

 

Bruce frowned. “Last time it…”

 

“They get better each time,” Clark assured him as his breathing slowly lapsed back to normal. “As we bond.”

 

Bruce’s eyes narrowed. “You’re a lot more knowledgeable than last time.”

 

Clark blushed. “I’ve, um, had reason to look up the bonding process recently.”

 

“Huh,” Bruce leant forward to pin him back against the sofa. “You’re not my bonded, Clark.”

 

He eyed him nervously. “I know… the process can take up to a year and with my DNA it might…”

 

Bruce growled.

 

“And if we don’t work out,” Clark added. “That too.”

 

“You _are_ my mate, now,” Bruce reminded him after a brief pause. “My alpha.”

 

A flickering smile. “Yeah.”

 

“So what, alpha, are you going to do about it?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys, I know these last few chapters have been really fast and a tad rough but I am leaving the country for about a month in nine days and I won't be writing there. No computers, you see. I am trying really hard to get this story finished before I go. Forgive the rough-ness!


	14. Chapter 14

Alfred saw it first.

 

Bruce had slept fitfully through the morning and spent most of the afternoon buried in the chemical compounds of a new hybrid of fear toxin and meth making its mark on the south side of Gotham. It wasn’t until the sun started to sink did he submit to the niggling hormonal hunger and finally make his way into the kitchen; the one place in his massive house the pack seemed to coalesce within beside the cave.

 

He was early and the butler was just starting to prepare an unusually light dinner. Unless the signal went up they weren’t going out tonight. Batman’s recent activity had once again knocked the caped crusader and his allies out of favour with the GCPD. Street surveillance was high and the criminals quiet.

 

When he entered Alfred looked up and his gaze immediately sunk to the mark on his neck. A flicker of surprise danced behind his eyes before he quickly masked it with his usual cool regard.

 

“You are welcome to the leftover pasta, Mater Bruce, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to defend the pie. It is for dessert.”

 

He grunted, relived the man was taking the evidence of his newfound relationship with Clark in his stride, and moved to the fridge to ruffle through the excess of food with an irritated frown.

 

“Where?”

 

“Here, sir.” Alfred appeared at his side and reached into the labyrinth of shelves to retrieve the leftovers. “But, if you wish you can wait for dinner. It isn’t half an hour away.”

 

“I…” he pushed the offered pasta away. “Can you make enough for a fifth?”

 

Alfred’s lip curled. “Indeed I can sir. I presume this is the long awaited presentation of your,” his gaze slipped pointedly to his neck and back to his face. “Mate?”

 

“I told Clark he could come over after work,” Bruce growled.

 

Alfred lifted an eyebrow and looked out the window at the fading lights of twilight.

 

“Metropolis is two hours behind,” he reminded him.

 

“Ah, of course.”

 

Bruce scowled and pushed around him. The butler quickly turned and caught his arm before he could disappear back into the safe tangle of the overbearing house.

 

“Master Bruce,” Alfred said. “Is this what you want?”

 

The question took him off guard.

 

“Forgive me if I am being too forward,” he said, releasing Bruce’s arm, “but two weeks ago you were trying to break your preliminary bond with Mr Kent. If this,” he nodded toward his neck, “is maintained it will mean a full bond one day.”

 

“I know,” he muttered.

 

It was a reminder he could have done without. Despite the doable crescent shape of Clark’s teeth imprinted on his neck he still secretly dreaded the prospect of a full bond. When he was younger it had been a struggle not to obey every growled command of any stray alpha, not to fall to his knees when they snarled and snapped in his presence. He had long ago detached himself from that part of his brain. But, once bonded that compulsion might return now strengthened and targeted to his mate. Beyond that the prospect of hormonal addiction wasn’t as pleasant when the notion of dependence was introduced.

 

Alfred studied him critically. “You must understand, sir, you are very bite shy and…”

 

“I asked for it.”

 

He had. He had asked for it because… he was better with Clark and it… it wouldn’t be so bad if it was Clark. Perhaps not bad at all, perhaps good, perhaps… something worth it.

 

“I want to… to try,” he managed. “I want to.”

 

That was enough.

 

Alfred smiled; a small, simple, motion that curled his lips in homely happiness. “Then, sir, I won’t hold you back.”

 

Bruce studied him uncertainly as the beta turned back to his cooking. They stayed like that; the pair co existing in a strangely easy silence akin to the first few solo years he spent under the cowl. Back then Alfred had been his only ally and his support had become the most fundamental structural pillar that held up the Batman. Without him he would have died years before on the streets under a signal-less sky.

 

When the smell of the food began to flood out the open doors of the kitchen Bruce set the table and sat as the two younger men followed their noses down into the only really homely room in his house. They arrived together, Jason striding purposefully through the open door with the slighter man hard on his heel, chatting casually about how to spot untrained trigger fingers.

 

Jason turned immediately towards the food.

 

Dick greeted him and the young beta’s eyes lit on the bite mark. He stopped and blinked across the room at him with unmasked disbelief; as if unsure what he was seeing was truly correct.

 

“Dick…”

 

“Eh…” the beta’s lips twitched in a cheeky grin. “Something you want to tell us, boss?”

 

Jason frowned and looked over his shoulder towards him. Bruce saw the young alpha eye him curiously for a moment before he noticed the bite imprinted into his neck.

 

“It’s nothing,” Bruce muttered.

 

Dick snorted. “Yeah, right, that’s…”

 

“You let him bite you?” Jason snarled.

 

Both betas glanced with looks of twin unease towards the younger male.

 

Jason’s glare was black and baneful, his hands balled into white knuckled fists held wide of his hips, and his lips tight against the half hidden clench of teeth.

 

Bruce straightened and turned to face him directly. “I told him to.”

 

Jason twitched violently. “Of course you did you fucking whore.”

 

Bruce felt those words sink into him like bullets. A bitter, cruel, and undeniable challenge. He started forward, a raw real growl ripping from his throat with animalistic fury.

 

“Hey! No!” Dick appeared in front of him, hands flat on his chest. “No no no. This doesn’t need to happen. Come on.”

 

Bruce glared down at him.

 

“Jason didn’t mean that. He’s just surprised. I mean, this came out of nowhere, right?”

 

He didn’t move.

 

Dick seemed to take this as assent and spun to face Jason. “It’s no big deal, man. You said yourself they were together more. You got to have figured this was coming.” A hesitant pause. “Besides… it doesn’t really matter anymore. I mean it’s…”

 

“Fuck off,” Jason snarled and stepped forward.

 

Bruce bared his teeth at the advance.

 

“But it…” Dick looked stricken. “Come on man, this shouldn’t matter! Not after…”

 

“You said you would stay out of my way,” Jason snapped. “Now stay out of my way, beta.”

 

Dick stared up at the other man with features cast in utter unhindered betrayal. “No…” he croaked. “That’s not…”

 

Jason’s eyes slipped off the smaller man to focus over his shoulder onto Bruce. The action seemed to wrench something in Dick; rip something.

 

He swung a sharp sudden punch into Jason’s cheek. The alpha grunted in pain and fell – knocked off balance from the unexpected strike – into the table, ramming the wooden structure onto its side and sending the plates spinning and smashing onto the polished floor.

 

“Fuck you!” Dick yelled, voice horse with unshed tears. “Fuck you and fuck off!”

 

Hot red blood trickled over Jason’s teeth and down his chin. His eyes were blistering as they rolled up to pin on the slighter man. He spat, heedless of where he was, and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. Didn’t say a word.

 

Dick spun around and fled the room as Bruce advanced. He grabbed Jason by the front of his jacket, hauled him to his feet, and turned to push him into the wall. Jason shuddered like a shark catching a taste of blood in the water and lunged forward with a guttural roar.

 

Bruce caught the tackle, used his momentum against him, and slammed him back into the wall. “I taught you better than that,” he growled.

 

Jason twisted out of his hold and jerked a quick uppercut. Bruce ducked back to avoid it and rushed forward to slam the heel of his palm into the other man’s sternum. He tangled a fist in Jason’s hair as the man rocked forward with a gasp of pain. He dragged him back to force him down onto all fours.

 

“No!” Jason broke out of his hold and scrambled away. Found the kitchen bench and used it to haul himself back onto his feet.

 

“What do you want, Jason?” Bruce said. Voice dangerously soft.

 

The man glared at him.

 

“What do you think will happen if you win?”

 

Jason tore off his jacket and threw it to the floor.

 

“Do you want to lead this pack?” Bruce continued, low, angry. “Do you think this pack will follow you now?”

 

“I don’t want your stinking pack!”

 

“What do you want?!”

 

His next attack was far more planned, more concise. Bruce grunted as he felt a few targeted blows slam into his torso and brought his fists up either side of his head to ward off the more critical strikes. When he saw an opening he shoulder charged him back into the benches hard enough the younger cried out in pain.

 

“Do you think I’ll bend over and let you fuck me?”

 

Jason leant against the counter and kicked him hard in the gut. Bruce staggered back with a snarl of pain.

 

“Would you even want me if I did?” He hissed.

 

“What the hell do you think, huh?” Jason threw his arms wide. “Can you _smell_ this place?”

 

“You like my scent,” Bruce continued remorselessly. “A high level omega, you want that. But you don’t want _me_.” A penetrating glare. “No, I like control and you don’t like to be controlled.”

 

“You’re an _omega_.”

 

He peeled his lips back. “Is that it? You want me to be a bitch for you. To behave. To be a proper whimpering omega.”

 

“You do it for the alien freak,” he spat.

 

Bruce didn’t bother to correct him.

 

“Fuck you,” Jason snarled. “I… I was never good enough… I was your second Robin, your failure and… now you can’t even look at me like I’m an alpha!”

 

Jason attacked again. Bruce wove around the wild blows, parried the more practised ones, and returned the ones that hit him. By the time he finally forced Jason down onto his knees both of them were badly bruised and panting. The alpha wrestled him until he grabbed a handful of hair and yanked the man’s head back, exposing his throat, and forcing him into the most profound posture of submission.

 

“Stay down,” he growled.

 

Jason shook his hand free and bowed his head but stayed on his knees, shoulders shaking, and eyes burning with hurt and humiliation. Bruce stayed standing over him for a moment before Alfred slipped a careful arm over his shoulder.

 

“Sir,” he said gently. “I would advise you go after Master Richard.”

 

Bruce let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding and nodded. “Okay,” he rasped. Looked down at the man kneeling at his feet. “Take care of him.”

 

“Of course, sir.”

 

He walked out of the kitchen and stood in the hallway a moment as he waited for his hands to stop shaking. His knuckles and forearms hurt, he could feel a bruise swelling on his jaw, and there was a tight uncomfortable hitch in the back of his throat. Sharp and almost painful. A lump of unidentified putrid emotion that threatened to burst and spill inside him. He swallowed it, tried to force his clothes back into shape, and walked up the stairs towards Dick’s bedroom.

 

Bruce pushed the door open and Dick looked up, and then quickly away.

 

“B-Bruce… I…” he quickly wiped his eyes on the back of his hand. “I’m sorry I walked out like that I… I just remembered I forgot something up here and…”

 

“Do you want me to send Jason away?”

 

Dick sucked in a sharp broken breath and shook his head. “No,” he rasped. “No, that doesn’t make sense. He’s part of the family too and… and I should get back to Bludhaven soon anyway. Or maybe I’ll follow up that lead on Zucco in Chicago.” His shoulder was turned towards Bruce, face aimed at the far wall, and long hair obscuring the set of his features. He sat on the end of the bed still rumbled and unkempt from the previous night.

 

Bruce pushed the door closed, advanced into the room, and sat down on the edge of the mattress beside him. He didn’t say anything.

 

“God,” Dick buried his face in his hands. “I’m sorry Bruce. I… this isn’t right.” He lowered his hands and looked towards him, eyes rimmed with red and gaze sinking to the mark on his neck. “I… I’m just sitting here fucking up your day when… I mean…” he forced a stretched smile. “Congratulations.”

 

“It’s just a bite,” Bruce rumbled.

 

“Yeah, for any other omega. For you, that’s huge. I’m so glad…” he stoped, breathed, recovered. “It’s good you and Clark are trying things together. He’s a good guy.”

 

“I invited him over after work today,” Bruce confessed slowly.

 

Dick laughed. A horse, painful, sound. “Man, I’m sorry; we’ve really fucked this up for you.”

 

“It’s okay…”

 

“No,” Dick shook his head. “You’re letting us in and I know that hard for you and instead of being there like I should be, instead of being a good beta, I’m sitting in here crying like a… fuck I…”

 

Bruce reached over and wordlessly pulled the younger man towards him in a simple, gruff, embrace. Dick stiffened in shock and then with a broken groan wrapped his arms around Bruce, hugging him and burying his face into his chest as he shook with dry wracking sobs like he did when he first took him from Haley’s Circus. Just like that night all those years ago Bruce felt stiff, awkward, and grossly inferior; unable to give him the comfort he obviously needed. But, just like that night, Dick seemed to find it anyway.

 

Not for the first time he caught himself wondering if he had done right by Dick taking him away from the circus. Taking Jason away from the Narrows. He’d never been much of a father and he knew neither boy truly saw him as such; he was a mentor, a teacher, and a general pushing them into the front line of his own personal war. The life he gave them wasn’t what either boy had asked for and he still didn’t even know if it was what they needed; what was good, right, and just. Had he saved them or had he stolen them?

 

Had he helped Dick grow into the man he had become or had Dick done so despite him?

 

Had he failed Jason in some critical way and undermined the person he should have become?

 

“I’m sorry I fucked up,” Dick said at last. “I… it was stupid of me.”

 

“You did nothing wrong.”

 

“Huh,” Dick squeezed him tighter. “I let him fuck me.”

 

Bruce felt a bitter surge of gut wrenching shock rise like bile up his throat. He gritted his teeth against it and glared at the wall before him, covered in all the posters Dick put up as a kid. “Jason?” He growled.

 

Dick nodded against his chest.

 

He growled and tightened his hold on the man, crushing him against him.

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

“Why?” Bruce snarled.

 

“I… I wanted it and I thought… I thought he thought I was…” Dick curled up against him. “I’m sorry.”

 

Bruce closed his eyes. He didn’t have the right to be angry; he didn’t have the right to judge. They were both old enough to make their own decisions. “It’s okay…”

 

Dick shifted uncomfortably against him. “Is it?” He asked, voice tiny.

 

“Yes.”

 

“I…” Dick swallowed. “I think it was a mistake.”

 

Bruce didn’t say anything.

 

“But I… I really don’t want it to be.”

 

“What happened?”

 

Dick laughed, small and fragile. “Nothing… nothing too… it’s just the _way_ it happened. I thought he liked me but he… the more I think about it the more he was just using me as a substitute omega. I could pretend but when he yelled at you just now it was like everything was the same, nothing was different… I thought he wouldn’t be so… so focused on you anymore.” He sighed. “He still thinks I’m just a beta to use when there aren’t any omegas around. He forgets me whenever you walk into the room.”

 

Bruce didn’t know what to say to that. To any of it.

 

“But,” Dick continued. “I… it’s not all his fault. I let him treat me like an omega. It was… it was hot, you know. I told him I was different but I didn’t show him and now I’m blaming him for it and it’s so stupid and childish and on the day you’re finally bringing Clark up...” He wiped his eyes. “And I’m a beta! I’m meant to be the one avoiding all the drama, fixing things, comforting you. Instead I fucked everything up.”

 

Bruce sighed. “You’re alright. You did nothing wrong.”

 

Dick didn’t look up at him.

 

“Let’s go downstairs and get some dinner.”

 

The other man snorted with laughter. “We messed you up there as well, didn’t we? You’re in your low point now, right?” He turned his head up towards him. “Hungry?”

 

He growled conformation.

 

A shaky smile. “Come on then, big guy.”

 

He let Dick lead him back downstairs and into the kitchen. When they got there Bruce watched as he busied himself picking up the smashed plates, seeming to steal some small comfort or distraction in the domestic activity. He seemed strangely small and uncertain. The near opposite of the boisterous blue eyed boy he’d seen grow into a bright brilliant young man.

 

Jason sat in the corner, an ice pack pressed against his jaw, and eyes locked onto his boots.

 

Bruce waved Alfred over.

 

“Sir.”

 

“I need to call Clark,” he muttered looking down at the rubble of his pack. “Today’s not a good day.”

 

The butler gave him an apologetic look. “It’s a bit late for that, sir.”

 

Bruce blinked, processed what the other man had said, and swore.

 

“I can leave if you like.”

 

Clark stepped in from the other room wearing full Superman regalia and holding a dustpan and a brush. His eyes sparkled with a strange emphatic light.

 

“No,” Bruce sighed. “I suppose you’re part of this mess now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry once again this is all so rushed. It's the middle of the night and this has been today's number one project. I hope you're all still enjoying it despite the roughness. I'm certainly having fun. :D


	15. Chapter 15

Jason lay on the cold dry grass - ice pack abandoned on the lawn beside him - and stared unseeing up at the stale shine of distant stars. The familiar chatter and shriek of the bats was an ugly jarring soundtrack like shrill demonic laughter in the barren night.

 

Everything hurt.

 

He cheek throbbed, his solar plexus remembered Bruce’s fist every time he inhaled, and his side ached where he’d been driven into the kitchen counter. He could still taste blood. Hot, arid, and rancid; trickling from a jarred tooth at the very back of his mouth.

 

But worse were the smaller pains; the unexplainable ones.

 

His throat felt crushed and constricted; like he was being strangled by an invisible icy hand, his stomach was painfully small; clenched around a condensed rotten lump he kept trying to heave up, and his face felt too hot and stiff; like he’d been injected full of scorching botox. There was a wet burning behind his eyes he refused to acknowledge.

 

He tried to ignore it and piece together the shattered remnants of his anger – his justification – but it all felt wretched, wrong, and unbearably fragile in the wake of his humiliating defeat. All his reasoning a stupid, childish, fantasy that if he could defeat Bruce everything would fall into its proper place; Bruce would acknowledge him not as a failure, or a liability, but as an alpha strong enough to take care of him and the pack. Like an alpha was supposed to. Instead he’d been put down, proven to be weak and worthless, and all just before the arrival of the _other_ alpha that would take his place.

 

The alpha that Bruce recognised and respected. The alpha that was somehow so much better than him in every way Bruce was looking to bond with him without even… without even _telling_ them about it first. He just arrived home with that ugly mark on his neck and for some reason both betas gushed over the betrayal like a newborn baby. They smiled and laughed as he was being blindsided by another alpha. Another alpha who was now in the house being fawned over by the whole family. Their new alpha.

 

Because how could he hope to compete with Superman when Bruce wouldn’t even… even look at him like he was an alpha. All he could do was try and show him, try to make him understand he was an omega and that meant… that meant something. Something that Bruce unquestioningly understood when it came with Superman but was blind to when it was him.

 

Because he was the errant Robin, the one he couldn’t save, the failure… and now he was the pathetic defeated rival sitting at the table with a dead man’s hand laid bare before him. Stinging with shame as he was found lacking with an intensity that left him feeling gutted. Like everything inside him had been ripped out he hung open and exposed.

 

Yet he still couldn’t bring himself to hate the injustice of it. He couldn’t summon the righteous anger he knew he should be feeling. All he could do was replay the events in slow sickening detail through his mind’s eye again and again.

 

He remembered being forced pained and panting onto his knees in front of Bruce, of having his hair seized and head yanked back hard enough to bring an involuntary sting of tears to his eyes, and the humiliation of being defeated so thoroughly and exhibited before the whole family. He remembered not being able to meet the man’s eye as Alfred performed a quick impersonal appraisal of his injuries.

 

He remembered the alien’s arrival and sitting ignored in the corner until everyone was distracted enough for him to slip unnoticed out the door with his tail between his legs. Escaping the degrading spotlight of his forced submission and condescension as he slunk into the night.

 

Bruce had only ever put him down so hard once before when he first came back as Red Hood. He’d made his way back to Gotham and deliberately tried to carve out the majority of Bruce’s long established territory. He’d been trying to prove he was a better Batman; someone who wasn’t afraid to do what was needed to save the city. But even then, even when the fighting was more brutal, the stakes higher; it hadn’t been as personal. The defeat was Batman over Red Hood. Not Bruce over Jason.

 

He heard footsteps coming towards him across the lawn. They were soft, the stride short and unsure. He quickly turned his head away from the light spilling from the house, hiding the traitorously mortified colour around his eyes.

 

“Go away, Dick,” he rasped.

 

A pause. “I’m honestly not sure if you think I’m your brother or really hate me that much.”

 

Jason’s hands balled into fists as the scent of the other man seeped through the air towards him. It was strangely unthreatening despite the strong, deep, undertone of alpha. “What are you doing out here, alien?” Part of him wanted to leap up and turn to face the outsider that had swept in and snatched everything that he could never have away. To try and reclaim the smallest shred of respect for himself.

 

But he couldn’t will his heavy hurt body to do anything at that moment. He couldn’t find the emotion needed to drive him forward. So he lay, defeated on the grass and swallowed – again and again – the sandpaper dryness in his throat.

 

“Alfred refuses to serve a dinner that is even slightly burnt so we’re skipping straight to the pie,” the alien explained. “I brought you some.”

 

He felt his stomach twist with a strange mix of emotion. “Huh, I suppose they think this is funny,” he said bitterly, hating how dry and broken his voice sounded.

 

There was a gentle rustle of impregnable fabric as Superman settled down beside him. “What?”

 

“Sending you,” he specified sharply.

 

A small sigh. “It’s dark out here, Jason. I’m the only one that can see you.”

 

A stretched silence.

 

“Besides,” the alien continued, his voice adopting up a slight Midwestern drawl. “I came here to meet you.”

 

He snorted. “Yeah right, freak.”

 

“It’s true,” he said, unfazed. “Last time I really spoke to you you were a kid.”

 

“Yeah? When was that?”

 

“Your father and…”

 

“He’s _not_ my father,” Jason growled, grateful he was starting to sound closer to normal. “And Dick isn’t my brother.”

 

An uneasy pause. “Okay.”

 

Jason swore, pushed himself into a sitting position, and blinked towards the sound and smell of the other man. The night was too thick to make out more than a hunched black shadow and the hem of an angled red cape caught in the light spilling through the windows of the manor.

 

“Pie?” The alien offered.

 

“I fucking get it, okay?” Jason snapped. “You don’t have to come out here and try to… whatever the fuck this is.” He hugged his sides and flinched as the motion awoke a host of new bruises. “I’ll stay away from you two. I’ll leave.”

 

“He doesn’t want that.”

 

“Yeah? How the hell would you know? You weren’t just forced to bend over like a bitch in front of an omega as if… ” his voice failed him and he turned away.

 

“I get it.”

 

Jason scowled and glared out into the darkness.

 

“In school they used to teach us that omegas are the most sensitive to pack hierarchy.” He said with obvious contempt. “Anyone who says that has never been in an alpha only gym class.”

 

Jason snorted at the tone of voice. “As if it would have been hard for you. You can punch through walls.”

 

“Yeah,” Clark said. “And because I could punch through walls I couldn’t punch people. I… I didn’t have great control as a kid.”

 

“So what?”

 

“So, I was the lowest pegged alpha in high school,” he answered simply.

 

Jason swallowed the dry pain in his throat and tucked his chin against his neck, hating himself for it but taking a small amount of comfort from the other alpha sitting beside him. “You telling me you were a virgin until you started wearing tights.”

 

A low laugh. “Not exactly.”

 

“What the hell does that mean?”

 

“Well,” the alien said. “I ended up dating another alpha on and off.”

 

"You were homo?"

 

"Yeah, I guess."

 

Jason snorted. “Fucking low, freak.”

 

“Kind of hot, actually,” he corrected, voice still passive and friendly. “But soon enough everyone at school thought I was alpha exclusive. Suddenly all the omegas wanted their gay best friend and I was invited to all the omega sleepovers.”

 

Jason paused, digesting this. “Did you…?”

 

“Depends on if you’re going to tell, Bruce.”

 

“Hey, I won’t tell him shit.”

 

A soft laugh. “In which case,” Clark put on a tortured voice. “I’ve never felt this way about an omega before.”

 

Jason heard himself laugh. “Fuck man, did it work?”

 

A thoughtful sigh. “No, not really. The parents saw right through me. But then, you know, my superpowers started coming in stronger and I started to get committed with Lana. Well, as committed as things get in high school.”

 

“Who?”

 

“The alpha.”

 

Jason caught the mocking remark that sprang to his lips and looked away with a scowl. “What are you trying to do?”

 

He heard the other man shift on the grass. “To build a bridge,” he answered.

 

Low. “Why?”

 

“Honestly,” Clark said, “if this whole thing with Bruce and I works out I might be a part of this pack one day.” He sighed. “It would be great if, whatever that part is, it is something more than just… Bruce’s tag along alpha.” He paused. Sucked in a deep breath and let it out. “I don’t know what all this is about. I mean, I do but… not really. I don’t want you to hate me, Jason, and I don’t want you to leave because of me.”

 

“So you figure coming out here and acting all submissive will pacify me,” Jason growled. “Tell stories to make you look like a weak alpha so I can push you around and feel like top dog. Or were you trying to say it’s okay to be bottom of the heap? I’m not a fucking kid.”

 

“No,” the other man conceded. “You’re not.”

 

“Look, Superman, I don’t give a shit, okay? Bruce already made it fucking clear you’re going to be the alpha in there from now on. I…”

 

“What?”

 

“Were you not paying attention? Or do you think we smash plates and punch each other for fun around here?”

 

“Jason,” Clark said. “Bruce is the leader.”

 

“I know!”

 

“He’s the leader. Not me.”

 

“He’s your mate.”

 

An open honest laugh. “He isn’t exactly the type to boost me to top alpha on a whim because we have sex.”

 

“You’re Superman,” Jason muttered.

 

“And enough kryptonite has disappeared into the back of that cave to make me _very_ reluctant to get on the bad side of anyone in this pack,” the other man said earnestly, “least of all the pack’s only alpha who has just given _Batman_ a pretty nice collection of bruises.”

 

Jason twitched.

 

“Bruce is the dominant one between us, Jason. I’ve never got him to really act like an omega and, honestly, that doesn’t bother me. I know you think I’ve somehow got him to kneel but, well, I think you probably know better than me how unlikely that is. Heck, _I_ kneel to _him_."

 

Jason stared off into the night, reluctantly processing this new information. He’d always known Bruce was a domineering arse of an omega but… it was something he dealt with in the present; not something he ever really sat down and considered.

 

Despite Batman’s chemically crafted non-scent everyone who did not know the man behind the mask assumed he was an alpha. He’d long ago adopted the purposeful stride, forceful stance, and deep throated growl that suggested a strong inclination towards the more aggressive caste. He lost some of that persona when he took off the costume… but not all of it. There were parts of him that were distinctly _strong_ in a way so completely at odds with the submissive omega stereotype.

 

As if caught on a rogue current his mind turned to the memories of his mother. She had been strong as well, in her own kind of way. Sharp and assertive. After his father left she devoted herself to him; raising him while spurning the affections of the alphas that seemed to constantly prowl at their door. When she started going through bond withdrawal she lapsed back into the drug addiction of her youth. He didn’t know how he could stop that, or tell the alphas to leave them alone, or how to prove it to everyone that he _was_ an alpha even if he wasn’t scenting yet.

 

They laughed at him, told him he was probably a bitch, only bitches whined like he did.

 

When the executives at Ace Chemicals found out she had lost her bond and was living alone she was fired. The drugs got worse and she let the alphas in one at a time to pay for it. He wanted his dad to come back and tell her to stop. He was her alpha, she would have to listen to him. But he never came back. So he started stealing to pay for it instead. One day he got home and she was gone. She’d left everything behind.

 

He’d looked on Bruce’s computer for Sheila Haywood, Catherine Haywood, Sheila Todd… he’d only found a brief reference to his father, Willis Todd. He’d spent four years in Denver Prison before being let out on good behaviour. He missed parole, disappeared, and years later was presumed dead.

 

Jason didn’t care. It was the man who had abandoned his mother. The alpha that had left his omega alone. And it didn’t matter how strong she was because she was an omega, and they were in the Narrows, and he couldn’t growl yet, and so she wouldn’t listen to him, and no one believed he was an alpha, and she needed someone to take care of her, and he stole so much, and…

 

He felt the hot burn behind his eyes spill over onto his cheeks. He spluttered through a broken curse, turned quickly away, and pretended to scratch his cheek and he furiously wiped his face clean. His sleeve scraped against the bruise Dick had left on his cheek and a fresh wave of pain reminded him of the still bleeding tooth and the other man’s unexpected assault.

 

“Why the hell are you over here wasting time with me,” he croaked between broken breaths. “Go bother Dick. He’s an easier convert.”

 

“I don’t want to bother him if he’s going to leave soon,” Superman answered solemnly.

 

Jason blinked and turned back towards him. “What?” He rasped.

 

“When I arrived I listened for Bruce. Dick was telling him he might head back to Bludhaven or onto Chicago.”

 

“But he’s… why?”

 

“I didn’t listen to anything else,” the man said sheepishly. “It sounded like a private conversation.”

 

Dick was leaving. The knowledge hit him with the same sharp pain as the man’s unexpected attack earlier. He felt himself lurch forward as for the second time that night he was struck by a sickening mix of ugly surprise and gut wrenching betrayal. Something inside him trembled with nervous anger but it felt rotten, wrong, and all he could think about was the look on Dick’s face after he punched him. The raw, rendered, pain as he told him to fuck off.

 

“You didn’t know?”

 

“No,” Jason whispered as he thought about that look. Hurt. Hurt in such a way that suggested something other than mere defence of his leader. Hurt and hurting with the primeval pain of slaughtered affection. “I didn’t know…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am SO on the fence about this one. I really hope it's good.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Christmas!

Bruce hissed in pain as Clark eased his shirt off his shoulders, slipped it gently from his arms, and dropped it carelessly to the floor. It pooled with a whisper of silk on the carpet at their feet. A melted black puddle of expensive fabric abandoned at the sight of Bruce’s exposed torso.

 

A collection of purpling knuckle sized bruises swelled across his abdomen, marched remorselessly around his hip, and splayed in hard hitting marks across his forearms. A single lucky strike had left a bruise on his face; spilling from the side of his lips to stain the spot between cheek and chin in a small dark smudge. Clark reached up cupped his cheek and ran his thumb gently across it as if to rub it out.

 

Bruce flinched and reached up to remove his hand.

 

“This was a mistake," he said.

 

Clark felt a nervous clench tighten in the pit of his stomach. “What?” He asked with forced normality.

 

“ _This_ ,” Bruce pressed. “Inviting you.”

 

“Hey,” his lips twitched in an uneasy smile, “it wasn’t so bad.”

 

Steel eyes focused on him with blistering intensity. “Wasn’t it?”

 

“It wasn’t exactly what I was expecting," he admitted reluctantly.

 

He’d come in to an overturned table, a floor covered in smashed crockery, an impossibly delicious looking meal abandoned to burn on the stove top, a concerned butler pressing an icepack to the rapidly swelling face of a younger man with blood dripping down his chin, and Bruce grimly comforting his distraught older son upstairs. The air was heavy with a tell tale mix of alpha and omega battle pheromones.

 

He’d stood uncertainly in the doorway until Alfred heralded him with a formal welcome and a brisk appraisal that left him with the estranged feeling of being a computer file that had just been wrenched open and scanned with inhuman thoroughness. The butler, and obvious pack elder, quickly established the young man sitting in the corner with downcast eyes was the suspicious Robin he’d met years before and a few times since; growing with the strange unnatural speed of children everywhere.

 

Now he was almost shoulder to shoulder with Bruce… and young enough that he may still have one last growth spurt up his sleeve.

 

Clark still wasn’t sure how he felt about Jason. Part of him wanted to disregard him as a boy, push him to the safe definition of youth, and allow that to explain away what had happened. But another part saw an unattached high level alpha prowling deep within his newfound mate’s territory. An alpha that had just violently proven he wasn’t a passive passer by.

 

He reached forward to gently trace the interwoven scars slipping secretively under the bruises, silently reaffirming the presence of the other man through the touch. Bruce frowned but made no move to either welcome or discourage the contact.

 

“Where is everyone?” He asked.

 

Clark listened. “Alfred’s asleep, Dick’s listening to music in his room, and Jason’s in the shower.”

 

An uncertain look. “Are the boys okay?”

 

Clark gave him an apologetic look and shrugged his shoulders. He didn’t tell Bruce he’d been listening to Dick’s phone chirp ignored on his nightstand for the last half hour or how long the rushing water of Jason’s shower had sounded at the back of his mind.

 

Bruce sighed and looked away from him. “This was a mistake,” he said again with more surety.

 

Clark sat down on the bed, wove his hands through the hoops of Bruce’s pants, and tugged him beseechingly forward. “Don’t blame yourself, okay? I was the one that wanted to meet everyone.” He let his lips curl in an encouraging smile. “I know this isn’t the best night for everyone but you’ve done a great thing raising those two.”

 

Bruce looked at him and Clark was hit with a heart wrenching wave of uncharacteristic uncertainty.

 

“Have I?”

 

“I… I think…” he stumbled over his words, caught under the strangely helpless spotlight of Bruce’s gaze. “Look… I know what happened tonight wasn’t ideal and I’m sorry. It was my fault. I wanted to meet everyone before they were ready and…” he sighed and leant forward to push a kiss onto Bruce’s naked chest. The sweet flavour of his skin rose to tease his lips with dark, delicious, promise.

 

“And?” Bruce rumbled.

 

“This has got to be hard for everyone,” Clark continued. “And I know Jason wasn’t… but he’s still pretty young and…”

 

“He’s an adult,” Bruce said gruffly.

 

“Barely.”

 

Bruce frowned. “He’s…”

 

“You think of him as older because he’s an alpha so he’s bulked up bigger and got full facial hair younger than Dick did,” Clark insisted, trying to ignore his own vicious doubts. “But he’s still young and…”

 

Bruce sighed and swung himself to sit down on the bed beside him, knocking away his hands with a distracted wave. “He’s old enough to know consequences of his actions, Clark.”

 

“It’s not as…”

 

“I’ve never been a parent to those two. Not the parent they needed and now…”

 

The too large bedroom descended into a stagnant silence.

 

Clark looked down as he thought about Jason sitting on the lawn trying to hide his tears behind gritted teeth and ugly glares. There had been a war behind his eyes; bitter humiliation, bleak acceptance, and a hurt that ran deeper than he would ever let show in the light of day.

 

Some things, Clark knew, belonged in the dark.

 

He had seen the same silently agonised darkness in Bruce’s eyes; a dark deep remembering that sucked him into himself and left Clark feeling shallowly uninformed as if suddenly aware of how much of himself Bruce kept hidden, even now. How much of himself belonged to the Bat.

 

It was a look simular to the one Bruce wore now as he gazed with a bleak regret at his hands sitting idle in his lap.

 

“What are we doing, Clark?”

 

Clark twisted his hands in his cape. “W-what do you mean?”

 

“Us,” Bruce specified grimly. “What are we doing?”

 

“Look,” he edged closer to him. “Tonight didn’t go as planned. That doesn’t mean…”

 

Bruce shook his head. “Jason has been itching for it for a long time but I… I didn’t think he would hurt Dick…”

 

Clark blinked. “What has he done to Dick?”

 

Bruce looked at him and slowly shook his head.

 

“Okay,” Clark accepted that. “Okay, but I don’t get what that has to do with us. I mean…”

 

“They’re my pack Clark. I’m the leader. I can’t just… I have to be there for them. I should have known what was happening before this.” He rolled his hands to show the bruising on his knuckles. “I should have at least had _an idea_. But we’ve been too entangled these past weeks and…” he closed his eyes. “I can’t let them down again, Clark.”

 

Clark stared at him. “I’m not asking you to leave your pack, Bruce.”

 

“No,” the man turned towards him. “You’ve been a distraction, Clark. You’ve always been a distraction. And now…”

 

“Stop,” Clark interrupted him. “Stop right there.”

 

Bruce gave him a pained look.

 

“I told you I would never ask for anything, Bruce. I told you that. If you need time alone to sort this, whatever this is, out then I can give you that. You don’t need to… to push me away just because…”

 

“It’s because I didn’t give them enough attention that this has happened! Jason should see me as a parent not… whatever the hell he sees me as,” Bruce said. “We should have at least tried to develop a filial bond. But we haven’t and now there’s this other kid.”

 

“Other kid?”

 

Bruce raked his hand through his hair. “An orphan boy has been following us on patrols.”

 

Clark blinked. “Are you going to…?”

 

“No! How can I when this pack is already such a mess!? When I’ve already let down two boys. I can’t even have a relationship with you without everything going to hell because of it. I’m not bringing another child into this pack. Not now.”

 

“You haven’t let them down.”

 

Bruce looked away.

 

“Look,” Clark pushed himself off the bed and on his knees before Bruce. He grabbed his hands and caught the man’s gaze as it swung down to frown at him. “No family is perfect, Bruce. Your family is also a working pack. And I know I haven’t seen them at their best but I don’t believe you’ve failed them, not for a second. Whether you want my help or not it doesn’t matter but please don’t push me away over this. Please.”

 

Bruce stared at him, face unreadable.

 

Clark felt his heart twist with flustered panic. “Do you want to come over tomorrow night and talk about it? I can cook something and…”

 

“No,” Bruce pulled his hands out of his. “No.”

 

Clark looked down at his palms; ugly in their emptiness.

 

“It’s not you, Clark.”

 

“I can’t,” Clark began softly, “I can’t do this without you, Bruce. I… you can’t just walk away after the first obstacle.”

 

“I’m not I…”

 

“What are you afraid of?”

 

Bruce’s hands curled into fists. Didn’t answer.

 

He hugged his sides and looked up at the man sitting slumped on the edge of the mattress before him. “This is a _relationship_ , Bruce. I can’t do it without you and I can’t… I need you need to trust me.”

 

A pregnant pause.

 

“I do trust you,” Bruce rasped. “I do.”

 

Those words hung like an olive branch in the air between them. A small sliver of hope, a truce, an understanding. Neither of them had expected this introduction to be easy, but neither had expected the string of events their bonding bite would trigger. They hadn’t expected their first night under this roof to be spent picking up the pieces of his pack.

 

“Then trust me,” Clark said slowly. “If you need more time with your family that’s okay.” He leant forward and rested his chin on the man’s knee. “If you don’t want me to bite you again right away that’s okay too.” Felt Bruce’s hand in his hair. “We’ll get through this.”

 

“You can’t know that.”

 

He glanced up. “It’s called hope, Bruce. It’s what this thing on my chest means.”

 

“I can’t just hope everything will turn out okay.”

 

“No, but _we_ can fight for it,” Clark informed him. “And we will as long as you still want me to stay.”

 

Eyes closed. “I want this, Clark. You know I want this. But this isn’t about want. This is about doing the right thing and… and fuck if I know what that is right now.” His eyes opened and he locked his gaze onto Clark; blistering and beautiful. “I’ve never done this before, Clark. I… I’m terrified of what this bond might mean and of letting down this pack and I know you said you would never ask for anything, but I can’t not give you _something_. But I want that something to be better than this.” He looked down at the bruises on his arm. “But this is all I have right now.”

 

Clark felt like he’d just sailed through a brief bloodthirsty storm and somehow emerged unscathed. Bruce’s voice was no longer precise and detached but clipped with unuttered frustration and coloured with a touch of his previous uncertainty.

 

“I want this, Clark. But I also want… you… my pack… and I don’t want to…” A defeated sigh. “I trust you,” he said. “I trust you. I trust you.”

 

The words became a mantra that faded slowly into an exhausted breath that Clark claimed with a warm kiss. Their partnership was still new and unstable but with the utterance of those words it felt like they had just lain the foundation to something bigger, stronger; something that could withstand the world beyond the windowless walls they’d constructed around themselves the past secluded weeks.

 

Clark abandoned any attempts to instigate sex and instead hugged the other man as he collapsed back into the bed and plunged into a deep exhausted sleep. It was the first time they had ever slept together - truly _slept_ together - outside of heat and Clark buried his face into the other man’s neck and drowned in the rich filling scent curling of him in lazy fragrant coils.

 

It would be hard.

 

Whatever lay ahead of them it wouldn’t be easy.

 

But he trusted that they could do it together.


	17. Chapter 17

“Hey.”

 

Dick looked up and quickly looked back down at the laptop sitting open on the bed in front of him.

 

“What do you want?”

 

He saw Jason shift irritably in the open doorway. “Just talk,” he muttered.

 

Jason had spent almost the entire night either sitting dejected in the corner or out of sight after Bruce defeated him. Dick enjoyed the chance to get to chat with his childhood hero free of his pack mate’s contempt even if the encounter hadn’t been as good as it should have been thanks to the unspoken wreck the fight had left the household in. As the sky started to pale Bruce dragged the Kryptonian up to his bed with a grunted farewell.

 

Due to work Clark hadn’t been there for their typically late morning breakfast, but Jason had. He’d come in last, stayed silent throughout the meal, and kept his eyes fixed resolutely downwards; the humbled rival looking as wrecked as if he’d spent the night curled in a small hole in the woods.

 

Dick hadn’t let his gaze linger on him, nor the ugly bruise he’d imprinted into his cheek. He didn’t let himself linger on him now.

 

“Piss off, Jason.”

 

“I want to talk to you.”

 

“There is nothing I want to talk to you about.”

 

“Yeah there is.”

 

His hand clenched into a fist.

 

Jason hesitated for a moment, waiting for his response. When it didn’t come he advanced a step into the room and spoke. “Why’d you hit me?”

 

He shot the man an incredulous look. “Fucking _seriously_?”

 

Jason scowled and dropped his gaze to glare down at the floor. “Why’d you do it, Dick?”

 

“Why’d you think?” He sneered.

He shifted uncomfortably. His eyes remained locked on the random spot of floor. “I don’t know.”

 

Dick slammed his laptop closed, swung his legs off the side of the bed, and stood to glare, arms crossed, at the other man. “You know what,” he said stiffly. “I’m not surprised.”

 

Jason glanced up at him.

 

“In fact, the only surprising thing about this situation is how quickly you noticed I wasn’t trailing after you like a lost duckling.”

 

Jason frowned and looked back down at his chosen section of floor. Eyes dark and face still with unspoken emotion.

 

“Since the only person you’ve opened your mouth to in the last twelve hours is Clark I’m guessing he somehow figured it out for you,” Dick accused, voice low. “I suppose I should be honoured you even noticed I hit you. With Bruce right in front of you I’m not surprised you missed what happened next.”

 

“We fought…”

 

“I said, _fuck off_ , Jason!”

 

A silence harried by the broken sounds of his hoarse breathing. He hated himself for that. Hated that he sounded angry not in the way of a justified accuser but a victim.

 

Jason waited to see if he would continue before he spoke. Voice pushed between pinched lips. “Why?”

 

“Why do you think, arsehole?”

 

“I don’t know,” he growled, eyes flashing back to his with a vicious spark of his usual defining antagonism. “That’s why I’m asking.”

 

Dick felt a lump of anger lodge painfully in the back of his throat. When he spoke it was in a low insidious rasp. “Let me give you a hint, hey? I don’t know if you paid enough attention to remember this but you shoved your cock up my arse a few days ago. Knotted me too. And I know you don’t really care but that kinda hurt. But, I didn’t mind because, fuck it, I thought I was _just a tad_ more important to you than an omega substitute. I thought you wanted to have sex because you _liked me_. Liked me enough to not drop me at the whiff of an omega.”

 

Jason shifted uncomfortably from one foot to another. Slowly his eyes journeyed from the floor back up to him. His gaze a blue so dark it was almost black. “Are you gonna…?”

 

“What?” Dick spat.

 

Jason’s eyes flicked to the bed and back to him.

 

Dick felt a lump of rage and hurt rise up his gullet; bitter like bile and breaking into lumps of putrid poison. “What?” He hissed, eyes narrowed with accusation.

 

Jason’s eyes returned to the bed. “Are y--”

 

“This is just like last time isn’t it?” Dick interrupted. “We fought about you being an utter arse of an alpha and you got a free fuck. So now we’ve had another fight about you being an _utter_ arse of an alpha and so you’re up here with your pants around your ankles.”

 

Jason bit the inside of his cheek.

 

“I’m sorry I didn’t make it clear the second time. Fuck. Off.”

 

He edged back a step and his eyes once again dropped to glare with a vengeance at the floor. “I was just asking if you’re leaving,” he mumbled.

 

“Yeah right. As if.”

 

Jason pointed at the laptop on his bed. “Are you gonna _leave_?”

 

“I…” Dick frowned, caught off guard by the earnest note in the other man’s voice. “I was thinking about it.”

 

“Why?”

 

“I… fuck, Jason. You know why I want to leave.” He turned his back on him and stared at the abandoned laptop sitting on the rumbled bedding. “Look, I’m too angry to talk to you about this, okay? You really fucked me over and I… fuck, I’m not just going to forgive you on this one.”

 

Angrily. “I didn’t know!”

 

“No! You didn’t _notice_!”

 

A deep, harried, gasp of air. “I’m sorry, okay?” Jason said, voice uncharacteristically strained. “I’m fucking shit with people and when you didn’t…” Jason swore under his breath and Dick heard him edge back into the doorway. “I didn’t know that was what we were doing,” he said through tight lips. “I didn’t mean to fuck us up and I’m sorry.”

 

Another silence left for Dick to fill. He clamped his jaw tightly closed.

 

“Fuck man, what do you want me to say?”

 

“Jason just…”

 

A thud.

 

Dick turned around and blinked in shock. “What the hell are you doing?”

 

Jason glared at him. “What does it look like?”

 

Jason knelt on the floor in a posture akin to that of submission. But while he rested on his bent knees he wasn’t surrendering. His hands were curled rebelliously into fists, his jaw was angled sharply down, and his eyes fixed resolutely forward; alight with his familiar aggressive assertiveness mixed with evident embarrassment and a forlorn aspiration.

 

“Get up,” Dick rasped. “This isn’t pack stuff. You don’t need to do that.”

 

“What the hell else can I do, huh?” Jason challenged. “I get it. I fucked up. I’m sorry. What the fuck else am I supposed to do?”

 

Dick could see how much it grated on him to resume the position so soon after being forced into it. It went against his instincts, challenged him to overrule the insistent high level alpha part of his brain, and rubbed salt into fresh wounds.

 

“Who told you to do this?”

 

“No one.”

 

“You’re a shit liar.”

 

Jason scowled. “The alien said it… it was what he did to Bruce.”

 

Dick’s lip curled. “Get up.”

 

“Are you going to talk to me?”

 

“No.”

 

Jason squared his jaw. “Then no.”

 

Dick didn’t bother to point out how absurd it was for him to be denying him while kneeling in his doorway. That ‘kneeling’ didn’t just mean sitting on your forelegs and hoping it would somehow make everything better.

 

“Jason,” Dick said. “I… I get you’re sorry, okay? But it doesn’t matter because it doesn’t change… You’re sorry because I’m not happy with you not because I’m unhappy.”

 

Jason frowned and looked away. “That’s not true.”

 

“It is. I forgive you, alright but… that doesn’t change _this_. I’m not going to forget what happened. You hurt me and I know you didn’t mean to but… you would hurt me again, all without meaning to, and I can’t do that.”

 

Bitterly. “So you’re just leaving.”

 

“Maybe I…”

 

“Will you come back?”

 

“Yes,” he answered without hesitation.

 

Jason shifted. “How long?”

 

“I don’t know,” Dick said desperately. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

 

“You told me this was a good pack…”

 

“This is a good pack!” Dick cried. “I’m not abandoning it, Jason, I… I don’t think I could even if I wanted to. I just need some time away. Can’t you get that?”

 

A strange look passed across Jason’s face. He lurched onto his feet, hugged his jacket around his shoulders, and nodded once with a jerk of his chin. “Okay,” he said, voice tight and controlled. “I get that.”

 

Dick watched with dry mouthed shock as Jason left without uttering another word. The brisk thud of his footsteps quickly faded as he departed down the hall.

 

“Fuck...” Dick slid his fingers through his hair. “Fuck…”

 

His gaze roved uselessly around the room until it locked back onto his abandoned computer. He’d flicked through flight lists and flat share websites looking for a new place that could serve as both a bed and a low budget batcave. None of it had been too serious; a half cocked plan for escape used more as a method of stress relief than an actual plan B. Yet as he gazed at the silver skin of the laptop the idea suddenly seemed both viable and fully premeditated.

 

But also cuttingly cowardly and almost cruel.

 

And yet also…

 

He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead with a grimace. If anything, last night proved this pack didn’t need him. Alfred was a far more stable beta who had been able to hold the pack together without losing his head. Now that Clark was looking to be a steady partner and mate for Bruce the man no longer needed his support. The only pack member left in the lurch was Jason and Jason… had proven he wasn’t worth sticking around for. Even if he… God, but he still wanted to.

 

But if he did; if he ran out the door and called back the departing alpha; he would just start the cycle anew. They would fall into bed in a tangle of limbs, he would edge a little closer to liking – really _liking_ – him, and then Jason’s attention would snap back to Bruce, or to another omega, like a stretched rubber band springing back into shape. They would fight, fuck, and he would fail him. Again and again.

 

He wanted Jason but he... he wanted more than Jason was ready to give. Perhaps more than Jason would ever be ready to give someone of his caste.

 

The last puddles of boiling anger quietened leaving him feeling strangely drained as if his rage had been the only thing fending off a wave of emotional exhaustion. His mind kept rolling to the events of the last few days; replaying in torturous detail the myriad of feelings he’d felt towards the younger man. Irritation, disregard, excitement, desire, hope, affection, hurt, anger… and now just defeat. Hollow and still heartbroken but… done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this is disgustingly short and way too quick but my deadline is coming up soon and I really want to get these chapters out. I hope you liked it and thanks for the support. You guys rock.


	18. Chapter 18

Bruce was training when it happened.

 

His muscles ached with a warm familiar burn as he worked them through the long ago memorized motions of his cool down routine. The bruises on his body protested the movement; scraping against the course heavy fabric of his clothes and tugging painfully against every stretch of skin. He ignored them and kept to his slow steady schedule of kicks, punches, and strikes; coolly incapacitating an imaginary opponent.

 

The smell of his skin rose around him in a distractingly alien aroma; his usual omega sweetness coloured with Clark’s hotter, muskier, scent; the by product of their strangely sexless night spent crushed against each other’s bodies. He’d woken up when Clark had apologetically wriggled out of his embrace mumbling something about a man called Perry and winning back his credibility.

 

He vaguely remembered clinging to him with an angry possessive growl before relenting as the other man pushed his deep delicious mouth against his. In that moment – caught in an absurdly childish tug of war with his distant boss and greedily blinking away his weariness to bask in the flavour of his lips – he couldn’t even conceive the fears that had almost driven the other man out of his life a few hours before.

 

Now, as the morning aged, they were starting to creep back like an infestation across his brain.

 

He was afraid. He was afraid of bonding, of what his partnership with Clark would mean for his pack, and of embarking towards a future he had never planned on. But, he decided with a timed kick, he wouldn’t let himself be governed by that fear. Not when Clark had looked up at him with such honest conviction and told him they would get through this. Not when the warmth of the other man’s hand encompassed his own, lending him such unspoken support, that he couldn’t do anything but tell him he trusted him over and over again; a record stuck on repeat.

 

Because he did trust Clark.

 

He didn’t know what would happen now, what would become of their relationship, but he trusted Clark enough to step blindly towards it. He trusted Clark more than he’d ever trusted any other alpha, he loved him, and despite the niggling anxieties still coiling cold around his thoughts he would fight for him. He would fight because Clark… made him better.

 

He sighed and stopped to stretch his abused body.

 

He had to hang onto that train of thought. He had to stay strong and lot let himself relapse into the dark uncertainty and the fear that struggled to control him whenever he remembered the disaster of last night or the slowly fading bite mark on his neck.

 

He turned to work through one more drill when Jason burst in the door behind him.

 

He could smell him almost immediately; the sharp strong tang of an agitated alpha flooded before him like a blood red welcome mat. A warning as blatant as if it were shouted in his ear.

 

Bruce spun around, hands balled into fists, and teeth set. He shouldn’t have been surprised Jason wanted a rematch. The boy was too stubborn to give up after one beat down. His mind was too engrained in sexual caste dynamics to kneel so easily to an omega. He was too driven by his core instincts to...

 

Jason stepped into the ring, walked up to him, and stopped to stare hopelessly at his defensive position. His hair was twisted and tangled, eyes bleak and barren, and face somehow older than it had been a day before.

 

When he spoke it was with a broken rasp. “I fucked up.”

 

Bruce felt the tension ebb from his shoulders. “Jason…”

 

The man lurched forward and they collided in a crushing hug. Bruce staggered back, caught by surprise, and grunted as he crashed into a hulking pillar of aged stone. Above the bats tittered in nervous alarm before settling back down to watch.

 

They stood like that for a long time; wrapped in a messy embrace and hidden in a shadowy corner of the cave. Jason hooked his chin over Bruce’s shoulder and hunched against him; breathing ragged and wounded. Bruce slowly brought his own arms to wrap around the other man and waited.

 

When Jason finally leant back he hesitated before rocking forward and scraping his cheek against Bruce’s in the age honoured way betas would reaffirm themselves with a pack leader. Jason used it now as a tentative token of togetherness; a symbol as simple as what it implied; _pack mate_.

 

“Jason…” Bruce heard himself. “What happened?”

 

He knew better to assume he’d swung into understanding in a flash of enlightenment. There was too much depth to Jason’s eyes for this to be brought on by anything so simple. Too much left untold.

 

“Dick,” Jason answered simply.

 

Bruce nodded. He didn’t need anymore information and Jason didn’t need to share it. All he sought now was an ally. Their relationship had been antagonistic for so long the simple bid for unspoken support felt like finding an open clearing after weeks hacking through dense jungle.

 

“I’m sorry,” Bruce rumbled.

 

“Me too.”

 

He dragged him forward into another hug and felt the hard shape of his body knock awkwardly against his. Neither was comfortable crushed together, neither liked to admit to their weaknesses, but Jason mindlessly accepted the brusque consolation and Bruce seized upon the strange strained relief he milked from the action. It soothed a part of him he didn’t even know was hurting and left him feeling unarmed and exhausted.

 

“I should have been a proper father for you two,” he muttered.

 

A horse laugh. “I had a dad. I don’t want another.”

 

Bruce sighed. “Is Dick leaving?”

 

“I think so.”

 

“He’ll be back, Jason.”

 

“I know.”

 

He considered the strained sound in the boy’s voice for a long time as Jason pulled out of his embrace and slumped against the stalagmite beside him, moving with the pained stiffness that spoke of his hidden bruises. Clark’s words from the night before came back to him. For the first time in a long time he looked at Jason and saw how young he was; his age betrayed only in the soft skin around his eyes. His alpha hormones had leant him a dense shadow of facial hair, bulked up his muscles, and emboldened his features. There was an indomitable darkness in his eyes that had burnt low and angry even as a child.

 

Whether that came from the abuse of his early childhood, his early knowledge of his caste, or was simply a part of him, Bruce couldn’t guess.

 

“You can leave too if you like.”

 

“I…” Jason hesitated.

 

“Dick was your support,” Bruce said. “I won’t blame you if you want to spend some time away now that Clark…” he trailed off.

 

Jason leant back against the rock.

 

“As long as you come home again,” he added.

 

Jason frowned. “I don’t… I just got back. I came back because this is my pack and it’s… I never felt at home here, you know, but I did feel… _pack_. Now I fucked that up.”

 

He eyed him critically.

 

Jason glanced at him, caught his eye, and looked away sharply. “It’s… it’s hard to live here sometimes, you know? Your scent is… it’s everywhere.”

 

Bruce growled. “It’s not something I can help.”

 

“I know, fuck, I know but…” he closed his eyes. “I don’t really want to fuck you, you know. Not _you_. But… sometimes when the air is so full of omega it’s… it’s hard to remember it’s… you. It’s just an unclaimed high level omega who hates me. No matter what I do I’m not good enough and… I can’t believe I’m telling you this.”

 

“I don’t hate you.”

 

A strained uncertain silence.

 

“I might not be unclaimed forever,” he continued.

 

The alpha flinched. “Don’t remind me.”

 

Slowly. “You don’t like me and Clark, do you?”

 

He looked away. “No.”

 

He nodded. There was no ultimate victory here, just a truce. But after such a long and stale war between them it was enough. He couldn’t ask for more from the wrecked and weary soul slumped beside him. He didn’t need more. Jason was still family and they’d both been hurt enough.

 

“With Dick I…” Jason began. “I mean we…had sex.”

 

“I know.”

 

He tipped his head down and nodded. “Yeah, you would.”

 

They stood through a lingering pause.

 

“Do you think he’ll ever let me…?”

 

Bruce growled.

 

“Huh,” Jason looked at him with the sharp hint of a smile. “You don’t like me and Dick, do you?”

 

“No.”

 

“Guess you’re in luck, then.” He kicked at a pebble at his feet. “He doesn’t much like it either.”

 

Bruce grunted. “That’s not what he told me.”

 

Jason’s eyes flashed to his. “What did he tell you?”

 

He shifted uncomfortably. “He thought it was a mistake. He didn’t want it to be.”

 

“He…”

 

“You do what he says,” Bruce growled. “If he’s told you to stay away you stay away.”

 

“But…”

 

“If he lets you near him again, and you hurt him again, I’ll break your legs.”

 

An indignant look. “What if he hurts me?”

 

“You’ll cope.”

 

Jason shook his head. “Harsh, man.”

 

“You wanted to be treated like an alpha,” Bruce reminded him, voice low. “You got it.”

 

Jason’s lips hardened into a line and he looked down at his hands. “I don’t want to leave, Bruce.”

 

The confession hung like a question in the air. Jason’s usually resolute voice rising with a hint of image shattering insecurity.

 

“I know I’ve messed this up,” Jason continued. “I get that. But I don’t want to just leave. I mean, I only just came back and Dick,” he paused and swallowed. “Dick has friends but I don’t. I’m just a lone wolf out there and it’s… I’m tired of it. I want to be part of this pack.”

 

“You don’t have to leave.”

 

Jason hugged his sides.

 

“You don’t have to stay every hour of every day either,” he rumbled. “If my scent is that distracting get out for a day. The city has enough smells in it to follow.”

 

“I’m legally dead,” Jason reminded him bitterly. “I can’t just walk around the streets.”

 

“You were fifteen when you died and hardly famous,” he returned. “Nobody is going to recognize you.”

 

Jason frowned as he digested this new idea.

 

“Will Superman be…” he fished for the word. “Here?”

 

“Probably.”

 

“Will he be…?” Jason licked his lips nervously. “You know…”

 

“I’m the leader,” he rumbled.

 

“I know but…”

 

Slower. Lower. “I’m the leader.”

 

“Okay,” he said at last. “Okay. I’ll stick around.”

 

He grunted his assent.

 

“You tell me what Dick does, okay? He’ll stay in touch with you.”

 

“Okay.”

 

“I can still help you sometimes on patrol.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“And don’t let that alien bite you again.”

 

He shot him a withering look.

 

Jason shrugged. “Hey, I was on a roll. Don’t hit me for trying.”

 

Hours later Jason had disappeared back up into the house and Bruce sat at the computer glaring at the training ring trying to decide if the estranged hug and conversation had really happened. He hadn’t suffered any injuries to the skull recently and the security footage confirmed the actuality of the event. All evidence pointed toward the drawn white flag. But he still couldn’t quite believe it.

 

The sensors beeped a rapid warning before Clark appeared in a blur of red and blue. He landed beside him with a ripple of solar powered muscle. His cape settled heavy and straight behind him with a swirl of deep red fabric. A collection of ebony curls tumbled unchecked across his brow. His nostrils flared, brows lowered, and eyes lost focus as they slid down his body.

 

“I’m fine,” he growled.

 

Clark’s eyes flashed back to his face. “What did he do?”

 

“Who?”

 

“Jason,” Clark snapped. “His scent is all over you. Did he attack you again?”

 

“No.” A small frown. “We hugged.”

 

“I’m serious, Bruce. If he’s going to keep doing this you need to talk to him.”

 

“I did,” Bruce said.

 

Clark’s gaze zeroed in on him and he stepped forward. “What did he say?”

 

Bruce frowned. “I don’t have a pack anymore.”

 

“What?!”

 

“Dick’s leaving and Jason… I don’t know what he’ll do in the long run. He’s here for now. But Dick has always been his link to the pack, not Alfred and not me.”

 

“That’s… is that good?”

 

“I don’t know yet.” He sighed and pushed himself upright. “I don’t think it’s bad.”

 

Clark’s eyes softened. “But you don’t want them to go?”

 

“I never want them to go. But if Dick needs to leave I’ll let him leave.” He glanced back at the deserted training ring. “I don’t think Jason knows what he needs but he’ll figure it out. He’s smarter than he pretends to be. Smarter than he thinks an alpha is allowed to be.”

 

Clark tilted his head and read his face. “You okay?”

 

He nodded.

 

“You still got your pack, Bruce. It’s just changing shape.”

 

Another curt nod.

 

Alien blue eyes analysed him. “They’re growing up, huh?”

 

Bruce opened his mouth to deny it but caught himself. Grimly bobbed his head in a reluctant nod.

 

Clark slunk forward and wrapped his arms around him. Their lips touched and Bruce shuddered as Clark’s sure strong taste permeated his mouth at sent the nerves on his skin firing with erotic intension. Not for the first time he wondered how he could have ever thought this man’s scent was boring. It was solid, sound, and spiced with the bold flavour of his inherent difference; an exotic alien sharpness that gathered warm and wet on his tongue amid the familiar alpha tang and the wholesome hearty taste that was all Clark.

 

It was almost enough to make him forget about the aching bruises, the events of the last night, and the looming second departure of his oldest ward. Both Dick and Jason had left before. Both had lived out from under his roof. Both were better for it. And both had come back. But, despite himself, he still felt a strange wrench when he heard one was leaving.

 

And without Dick he wasn’t sure Jason would stick around.

 

“Hey,” Clark whispered as their lips broke apart. “I can’t stay long I just wanted to come and make sure you’re still with me.”

 

“What?”

 

“Last night you were…”

 

“I’m with you,” he murmured.

 

Clark shifted against him. “How far?” He said nervously.

 

Bruce grunted. “As far as I can see.”

 

Indestructible arms tightened around him. “You mean that?”

 

He opened his eyes and blinked angrily up at him. “I don’t lie.”

 

“I know. It’s just that last night you were playing a different tune. A _really_ different tune.”

 

“I’ve never done this before, Clark. I…” he frowned, “just don’t give up on me when I lose it, okay? Because I will. I can’t keep a mask on all the time and I’m still bloody scared under here.”

 

He made the confession in a gruff growl, face turned away, and arms held stiff around the other man’s lingering body. Clark seemed to understand – _really_ understand – despite it.

 

“God, I love you sometimes.”

 

He glared at him. “Get back to work, Kent.”

 

A hurried press of lip against his and the man disappeared, as obedient as ever, in a whirlwind of air.

 

Bruce waited until he was sure the man was gone before licking at the lingering flavour of him left across his lips.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this really fast and editing is sketchy at best. I'm flying out tomorrow morning and it's been a crazy few hours trying to get this down. Forgive the rushed-ness.

The air was hot and heavy; filled with an intoxicating cocktail of mixed scent, and the deep throated grunts and muffled groans of muddled pleasure. Bruce’s body quivered above his, muscle standing with an easy unembarrassed beauty under the blaze of ceiling lights. His scars shone vivid under a glittering sheen of sweat against the smooth pale colour of his skin.

 

He was bunched forward, his knees planted into the mattress on either side of Clark's head, and his forarms against Clark's hips. He dipped his head down to swallow the length of his alpha's cock; an action mirrored by Clark as he arched up to return the favour. Unlike Bruce his eyes were open and pinned on the interlaced muscle and scar touched flesh of the body above him.

 

He was more beautiful than anything Clark had ever seen. The raw violent masculinity of the man flavoured with the secret stories scratched into the flesh, the defined shape of his body, and the rich captivating scent that rolled off him in enthralling furls of uninhibited _omega_.

 

An omega pressing him forcefully down into the rumbled bed below him; an omega sucking his cock with precise practised _predatory_ precision; an omega thrusting into his mouth with rapidly mounting urgency.

 

Clark moaned around the length of the other man as he watched Bruce move above him. Each twitch and thrust slightly less controlled than the one before, each flinch and flex of muscle a little less efficient, each roll of hips less orderly, less elegant, and all the more beautiful for it. All of his efficancy falling to pieces as it drew closer to orgasm. He watched with the intensity an addict as Bruce’s usualy fluid motions fell apart, his control crumbled under the attention of Clark's tongue; greedily sucking on the long curve of the omega's shaft with every downward thrust.

 

Bruce groaned deep in the back of his throat and Clark twitched involuntarily forward as the sound vibrated against the head of his aching shaft. A fresh flush of salvia prickled hot and bitter under his tongue and he swallowed against the other man. Bruce spat him out with a curse and buried his face into his groin to lap at the swelling hilt of Clark’s cock, the action harried and broken as he grunted around his own peaking pleasure.

 

Clark felt his victory close and hand and sucked him harder, took him deeper, and reached up to slide a finger through the moist cleft of his arse. Bruce’s groan broke into a stuttering gasp and he slumped against him as his muscles quivered and collasped against the unexpected assult.

 

“Fuck Clark…”

 

Clark traced the weeping rim of his entrance; teasing the taunt flesh as he continued to suck on the length penetrating his mouth. When Bruce seemed to adjust to the treatment, when he was able to gather himself enough to thrust into his mouth again, Clark pushed one finger passed the sodden pucker of muscle into the warm cavern beyond. Bruce twitched violently and hissed through his teeth.

 

“Clark…”

 

He added another finger and began to push inside him in time with the motion of his mouth. Crooked his fingers to scrape bluntly from his prostate down to the sensitive spot just beyond his rim. He stroked the nerves that made Bruce's face morph with pleasure whenever he took his knot and wished they were in a position he could see Bruce's face but loving the detailed duel attention he could show him like this.

 

Bruce twisted above him and let out a strange keening growl before angrily sucking Clark’s cock back into his mouth with ravenous intension and grinding himself back against him.

 

He leant forward, pressed his face into the delicious source of Bruce’s scent, and opened his throat to take him deeper than any normal human could. Began to roughly rub his fingers through the wet warmth inside him and groaned in delight as he felt the man respond.

 

When Bruce came it was with a mess of overlapping orgasms.

 

He cried out, voice hagged and beautifully needy, as his rim clamped down around his fingers. Clark swallowed the spray of semen and caught him as he collapsed onto him with a defeated moan, body shuddering with satisfaction.

 

“God, you’re gorgeous when you come double like that,” he rasped.

 

Bruce shivered. “Fuck Clark…”

 

A moment passed.

 

Clark showered kisses onto his partner’s skin and revelled in the deeply erotic taste pooling in his pores. Normally an alpha’s sense of taste wasn’t strong enough to be able to sense the hormone embedded in an omega’s skin. Never had Clark cherished his super senses more.

 

Bruce groaned and with a roll of muscle shrugged off Clark’s wandering hands. He swung himself off him, turned, and sat back on his haunches between Clark’s legs. Blisteringly beautiful blue eyes bore into him for a breathtaking snatch of time before Bruce reached down and wrapped a fist suffocatingly tight around the swollen shape of his half formed knot.

 

Clark shuddered through a wave of need and watched in fascination as Bruce fell upon the rest of his cock; sucking him with an almost jealous anger; lips stretched tight around his alpha's girth. His eyes remained locked onto his; pupils gaping despite the light like twin black holes. Dark, destructive, and dangerous in his demanding desire. Framed with a perfect piece of pale colour.

 

It wasn’t long before Clark was panting, drowning in the illicitly beautiful scent now pouring off the other man, and desperately trying not to lose control of his powers as he bucked near helplessly into the hungry maw of his mouth.

 

When he came it was with a moan that blasted from his throat with the force of a fist and painted the ceiling in ice.

 

“I… f-fuck I’m sorry,” he heard himself stammer as Bruce licked him clean, fist still wrapped tight around the bludge at his base. “I’ll pay for that.”

 

Bruce looked up, coolly regarded the damage, and turned back to gently suck the come off his still erect cock. He kept lapping at him long after all trace of ejaculate was gone.

 

Clark gave himself over to the feeling; let the alpha inside him growl with contentment as he was held, tasted, and found satisfactory by his mate; by the most effortlessly dominating and unreservedly magnificent man on the planet.

 

“This is better,” Bruce muttered as his eyes rolled up to pin on him.

 

Clark frowned. “What?”

 

“With the lights on.”

 

He shifted under his gaze and found himself nodding; mindlessly agreeing to the sharpness in those stunning silvery eyes; to being seen and observed during sex with the same intense fascination as Bruce would afford him during the day.

 

When they’d first started mating the darkness had been a shield; something applied with unspoken expectation that should have protected them both from each other. A silent symbol which meant they could mate without being mates; that they could be lovers without being in love. But, his super sight saw through the darkness, and Bruce had somehow reached blindly through it, and now they were no longer in the dark.

 

Now everything was different.

 

Bruce released him and crawled up his body to collapse against him. Clark reached forward to lift his chin and push a light kiss onto his lips, trail his tongue through the prickle of stubble across his jaw, and mouth at the gland on his neck. This close Bruce’s scent was almost overbearing; a rich river of impossible essence flowing from him in an involuntary siren call, obscenely carnal and intoxicatingly erotic, heavy with fervid suggestion.

 

Bruce arched into him, giving permission.

 

Clark bit.

 

It was like falling from the sun into the artic ocean.

 

Bruce’s taste – his _true_ taste – was everything his scent promised it would be and more. Encompassing, enthralling, and so addictive it _had_ to be illicit. A deep darkness he could fall into forever. A darkness that would hold and consume him, keep him prisoner, and in it he would never _never_ miss the light, the strength, the surety of the sun. Because beside him the sun was a pale distraction, a distant orb, with not nearly enough gravitational pull to drag him from his mate’s neck.

 

The only thing that would stop him, that could stop him…

 

Low, gravely, pained. “Enough.”

 

… was him.

 

Clark drew back and sucked in a slow shuddering breath. “God… I…” He struggled to control his ragged breathing. “God…”

 

Bruce eyed him carefully; critically analysing his open mouthed reaction with masked relish. He licked his face a few times, crudely tasting the alpha in his sweat, and growled low and deep with animistic satisfaction when Clark arched forward; offering himself in return.

 

Bruce’s tongue penetrated his lips, swept passed his teeth, and plundered his mouth with aggressive purpose. Clark groaned as his own tongue was shoved aside so his partner could sample his inner cheek, lips, and the blunt shape of his teeth. It didn’t last long; a crass pillaging kiss that broke with a wet smack of lips and a second kiss – a true kiss – that flooded Clark with unexpected warmth.

 

“I love you,” he whispered as their lips parted for a second time.

 

Bruce rumbled in appreciation as he settled himself down on top of him.

 

He didn’t need Bruce to repeat the gesture, didn’t need him to reaffirm his feelings. Not in that moment. Because being here, Bruce bring here, was evidence enough that his love was requited. Because being here with him despite all the confessed fears was a stronger gesture than anything he could ever say.

 

Time passed and Clark listened to the beat of the other man’s heart as he drifted into a deep satisfied sleep.

 

Clark hoped he would never get used to the weight of Bruce’s body draped over his; that being trapped under the unconscious mass of the other man would stay this surreal and heart stopping until the day he died.

 

Part of him still couldn’t quite accept the unexpected turn of events that had so suddenly and so thoroughly changed his life. Part of him still wondered if he had instead fallen asleep at that restaurant waiting for Bruce and was now swept up in a lucrative dream. Part of him was so afraid of that possibility he couldn’t pinch himself for fear of what he might open his eyes to.

 

But another part of him, a stronger part, listened to the solid sound of the other man’s heart, felt the tingle of his breath against his skin, inhaled the smell of their shared pleasure, and knew he could never imagine something so simply and yet surely right as Bruce Wayne.

 

Bruce stirred and Clark quickly began to track his fingers gently along his scars; feeling the unnatural ripple of flesh, and the shudder the motion evoked. Most scars were small, almost secretive, but some were brutally blunt; speaking to their origins through the shape of twisted flesh alone. A massive jagged bite encompassing one shoulder; the result of a long ago battle with Killer Croc. A small slice parallel on each side of his torso; a deliberately non fatal stab wound. And a slim surgical scar slipping down the small of his back, directly over his spine; evidence as to his crippling defeat at the hands on Bane.

 

Some scars Clark remembered happening; the blunt cut on the side of his head - now lost in his hair – he’d gotten fighting the minions of Darksied; the healed fracture on his ribs when one of Luthor’s robots had knocked him into a wall; and the small puckered burn on his knee where he’d been hit with an exploding chunk of the Brainiac mainframe.

 

He touched every unnatural mark on his body, every scar, until he finally reached up to slide his thumb gently along the freshly renewed bite mark covering his omega gland. Bruce flinched and his eyes blinked open. Clark felt his breath catch painfully in the back of his throat as twin black pits deep enough to swallow the world fixed on him, rimmed with a sliver of sharp pale blue.

 

Bruce frowned, shook him off his neck with a lethargic growl, and reached out to possessively pin his hands under him before closing his eyes and dipping wordlessly back toward sleep. Dictating him without a hint of reluctance or reservation. With a dark dangerous dominance that defined him more than his caste ever could.

 

Clark smiled as he allowed himself to be controlled; thrilled at the natural domineering facet of the man; an undeniable savage streak that was as beautiful and alluring as the man himself.

 

He could never imagine an omega like this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, guys, that's it. You have been an utterly awesome audience and thanks for giving me the support to get this out in my tight time frame. It's been a blast. I hope it was as much fun reading as it was to write. If you have any parting words to share with this story now is the time to do so.
> 
> I'm going to be away for a month so what happens next is still up in the air.
> 
> While writing this I have come to realise it is sitting in the middle of a string of stand alone stories set within this universe (there are hints scattered throughout as to some of the things that happened previously). I really do want to write a sequel and/or a prequel (or two) and would love to know what you guys would like to see. Would you like to rewind the clocks and get the history and then continue from there or are you not too keen on what happened before and would rather just focus on the now? Either way I'm keen.
> 
> Thanks again! You guys really are amazing. Thanks for turning this into the number one story in my gallery. :D

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [One Year Later](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2647289) by [Evilpixie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evilpixie/pseuds/Evilpixie)




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